


Rushing Waters

by BurningTea



Category: Leverage
Genre: Angst, Eliot is dead from the start but he's still walking, F/M, Gods, Happy Ending, Hurt/Comfort, MCD, Multi, OT3, Reincarnation, Supernatural Elements, True Love, Undead
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-10-28
Updated: 2016-10-28
Packaged: 2018-08-27 13:24:53
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 10
Words: 28,073
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8403346
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/BurningTea/pseuds/BurningTea
Summary: Eliot has lived so many times before that he can't remember them all. A deal with the gods in the distant past means he'll keep serving them, and keep living again without ever being allowed to finally die, until he finds true love. Thing is, he knows he's found love, and he doesn't know why it doesn't count. When Eliot dies, the team has to deal with the fact he's still awake and talking, and that what he's saying makes it sound like he's lost his mind.





	1. Riverlands

**Author's Note:**

> An Eliot is dead and still walking around fic. I have a weakness for Eliot being part of some supernatural deal or contract, so if this turns out to have worked, expect more of them. 
> 
> With regards to any medical stuff, just go with it. I have no idea.

Parker stares down at Eliot. He’s still and unmoving on the ground, body sprawled across one of the white lines marking out a parking space. A shadow’s falling over his face. 

She presses down on the wound, but blood seeps out around her fingers even with the fabric of her shirt bundled into Eliot’s body. Cold concrete steals the warmth from her legs where she kneels and the hollow echo of her own breathing, of Hardison’s breathing, fills the space. Her arms tremble from trying to keep this up for too long, and she’s almost sure Eliot’s stopped breathing.

“Come on,” Hardison’s saying, murmuring it over and over and over again as though Eliot might answer this time. “Don’t leave us, man. Just gotta hang on for a bit longer. You hear me?”

In the distance, Parker hears the sirens. For once, she’s glad to hear them. She’s less pleased that they’ll both have to face what the paramedics say, that Hardison will have to hear them say Eliot’s gone. 

Parker swallows and pushes harder on the wound. Eliot’s come through a lot and perhaps his breathing’s just shallow. 

“Eliot?” Hardison says, and his voice breaks over the name. “P-Parker, I don’t think he’s-”

“We don’t give up until we have to,” she says. Snaps. “The ambulance is almost here.”

But for those last few minutes it takes for the paramedics to reach them, she knows they’re both pretending there’s anything of Eliot left to save. 

***

He’s gone before he knows it. Eliot has time to see Hardison’s wide eyes, has time to hear Parker call out over the comms, and then it’s all swept away. 

When his vision clears, he’s right back where he hoped never to be again. The shadows cling to everything, but they always do. That isn’t even the part he hates. Shadows are something he sees everywhere, even back up in the waking world, even in the full light of day. The team think he’s just hyper-aware, and he is, but there are times the shifting of a darkness that shouldn’t be there alerts him to danger. Just one of the legacies of the deal. So the shadows can be useful and he doesn’t really hate them, not when they’ve helped him save lives. No. What he hates is the figure standing on the bank of the river, staring out over the water. Or rather, he hates what seeing her means.

“You got no right to pull me back,” he says, but the heat in his words is tamped down. 

And that’s what he really, truly loathes about this: when he’s here, all feelings are muted, washed out and gray. He knows he’s pissed at being yanked from his life, but he can’t summon up the full power of it. It doesn’t warm him the way it does when he’s alive. Even the hatred is more an academic thing than something of his guts and bones.

“I have every right,” she says.

She doesn’t meet his eyes. With her hood thrown back and her hair falling in thick spirals down her back, she looks more approachable than she sometimes does. If he didn’t know any better, Eliot would think she was a young woman with sorrow in her life, bracing herself to be strong. But he does know better. She’s far from young, and she’s already strong. 

“Why now?” Eliot asks.

He thinks Hardison would be surprised at how lacking in force the words are, but Hardison hasn’t spent so much time in this place. Hardison will likely only ever be here once and he won’t be forced to remember it.

She sighs and turns. Her eyes are as gray and as clear and as distant as they always are, and Eliot shivers. 

“You’ve had your chances in this life,” she tells him. 

Eliot takes a step closer, crowding in and scowling down at her. It takes effort and soon he won’t be able to do it, won’t be able to call on the memories of his decades as Eliot Spencer to try the intimidation tactics on her. 

“You made me break my promise,” he says, managing a little of that growl he found so easy even thirty minutes ago. He’s going to cling to it for as long as he can do.

“You said you’d stay until your dying day,” she says, tilting her head back to keep eye-contact. She shows no sign she’s threatened or thrown. “You did exactly that. No promise has been broken here.”

“I meant-”

“I know what you meant.”

Silence fills the little space he’s left between them and he feels the little anger he’s held onto slipping away. He thinks it used to be easier to stay vibrant, to stay vital, but even his memories don’t last forever in this place. They just last longer than his emotions. 

He can still recall images of people’s faces, if he wants to. 

He still sees the woman with pale hair and sharp blue eyes, her wide skirts billowing as she danced and the pearls around her throat hiding the scars from an attack that almost killed her. She would have died if Eliot hadn’t been there to protect her. He’d have stayed to protect her for the rest of her life.

He still sees the man with the ink stains on his fingers and the joy of knowledge in his heart, a man who was taken from Eliot before Eliot could be taken from him. Soldiers had come with talk of treason and Eliot, alone in that life, hadn’t been able to find a way to get his scholar back before he’d been pulled back to the river himself. 

He can see them in his mind’s eyes if he wants to. He just isn’t sure he wants to. 

“You have to let me stay sometime,” he says now. “This can’t go on forever.”

She shrugs and steps back, but it’s not got the air of retreat around it. 

“We’re gods, warrior. We have all of forever if we need it.”

“You’re no more a god than I am,” he says, but he closes his eyes and rubs at his face. “They gotta let me go sometime.”

“I might not be a god,” she says, “but I’m their agent in this. And they’ll be done with you when they’re done with you. You agreed to the terms.”

He hadn’t. A choice had been made, but it wasn’t by him. That isn’t the sort of argument that will make any difference, though, and he’s almost sure he’s tried it before. Almost. It’s strange, the way that first life, or bits of it, are still sharp and clear in his mind, when so much of what’s gone between is lost to him. 

“I’ve found love. Loads of times. They still keep sending me back here.”

“Everyone comes here,” she says, her back to him now. “Even the gods will walk the path eventually, until all the universe is cold and empty and gone. Even if you find love, you’ll return here one more time.”

“But I’ll get to walk. Not stand here waiting for orders and knowing I’ll have to go back out and try all over again, with everyone I’ve ever loved the other side of the veil.”

“Maybe you loved them. Maybe you didn’t. And maybe some of them even loved you, after a fashion, but it wasn’t true love or you’d have lived your last life by now and be done.”

Maybe some of them loved him. The hurt’s distant, but he feels it. Maybe. 

“They loved me back,” he says, and knows even in the waking world he might not sound invested in the statement. 

“Not enough. The gods make hard deals, but they don’t break them. Perhaps you just aren’t capable of true love. Or maybe you found it before you made your deal, and have no chance to find it now in the land of the living.”

If that’s right, if Eliot really ran into the person who could truly love him way back when he still counted as fully human, then she’s right. Anyone alive then has been dead for a good long while, and he can’t walk the path to find them. 

“Why isn’t it enough that I just love them?” he asks, because he knows he has. He knows it. “Why’s true love have to mean being loved back?”

He has to go to her, to circle enough that his left foot is right on the edge of that damned river, before he can see her face. She turns her head just enough he can tell she’s listening, but she’s apparently done with looking at him.

“They don’t have to feel about me the way I feel about them,” he says, and now an image of Parker flashes across his mind, eyes alight at something interesting, and there’s an impression of Hardison, hands waving as he outlines some tech Eliot will never even try to understand. “Love ain’t a bargain. It ain’t a deal. Your gods, they never understood that.”

“It isn’t meant to be a sacrifice, either,” she says. “You never seem to entirely understand that.”

***

Hardison watches Parker as she drives. The ambulance is just ahead, sirens blaring, and only Parker could keep up with them. Her expression is tight, shut down. She’s working the problem.

“Call Nate,” she says. “Get him and Sophie here.”

She doesn’t say why. It’s not like either one of them can grift their way into a surgery and be of any use. 

“Park-” he says.

She cuts him off.

“Call them, Alec! They should be here. They…they should be here.”

She won’t say anything more, and Hardison clamps down on his fear and on the grief that wants to swell into something debilitating, and call Sophie. Nate’s already had to lose too many people. Not that this… Not that they’re going to lose Eliot. The paramedics got him back. Eliot was taken away with his heart still beating, which means there’s hope. He isn’t calling Nate and Sophie to tell them Eliot’s…that he’s gone. Because Eliot isn’t gone. Eliot will never leave them until he has to. It’s one of the bedrocks of Hardison’s existence, and he doesn’t intend to relay the foundations of his life, so Eliot had better damn well stay with them.

The guy shouldn’t have taken that bullet. Hardison should have spotted the other muscle, the one hiding from the cameras, and he shouldn’t have needed pushing out of the way. He shouldn’t have needed Eliot to take that bullet for him.

He refuses to think too closely on why his throat closes over a sob as he makes the call.

***

Eliot wants to argue. He does. It’s faint and it’s distant and it’s nothing like the burning intensity it should be, but he feels it enough to marshal his thoughts. He’s tried this before, he thinks, and it’s never worked that he knows of, but this time he hasn’t left just one person behind him. This time he’s left two, and that’s if you don’t count Nate and Sophie and the others he’s let himself care about, even just a little. 

“I don’t sacrifice myself for the people I love,” he tries, and stops as she spins to face him.

Her eyes are brighter, harder than normal. They’re almost blue and they silence him.

“You’ve thrown yourself on the sacrificial fire in every life you’ve ever had,” she says. “If not the fire, then you bare your throat for the knife, or open your veins to soothe another person’s hurt. You’ve always been a protector. It’s what keeps destroying you.”

The golden haired woman with her pearls was taken by enemies and Eliot died returning her to her family, cut down even as she made it to the coach and to safety. He thinks to safety. The scholar had no family but Eliot, and it was a musket that time, smashing Eliot to pieces as he tried to get his man out of a stone cell. There are others, further back, some shining in his mind nearly as brightly. There must have been some since, because he hasn’t missed so many years above ground as all that, but he finds those two are largest in his mind. 

He remembers his first love, too, but it’s more an impression of long dark hair and brown eyes, of promises and duties and death. He turns from the memory and tries to focus on the present.

“I’ve done enough destroying myself,” he says. 

“This last life has been the closest I’ve known you come to becoming what you fight against.” She even sounds saddened by it, by his decisions and actions that strayed so far from the paths he’s usually taken. “Perhaps that’s why they’ve decided as they have.”

“What?”

A new decision has never been good. By now, he’s normally been sent on his mission, the shade of his fading life lasting long enough for whatever it is the gods want. He doesn’t usually get as long as this to try and state his case, or to complain, or whatever it is he’s doing on this riverbank with the waters rushing by feet below.

“They want you to put those skills of yours to use,” she says, as though she never mentioned anything off script. 

“I ain’t killing anyone for them.” He makes the words as hard as he can, obsidian and iron.

“You’ve killed for them before,” she says. “You will see to this and you will retrieve the items they want. Perhaps you will find what you need to complete the deal.”

He hears the hiss of air moving and feels the edges of his flesh tug. In a few moments, he’ll dissolve into nothing and find himself fighting back to where he needs to be for his mission, the knowledge of it sitting chilly in his mind. There’s something in her phrasing that’s different to usual. She hasn’t said he’ll have the chance to try again in his next life. 

He dissipates with the question unasked on his tongue: Is there still a chance he can ever meet someone and stay, that he can live out a normal life with them? 

He doesn’t ask, because he doesn’t want to hear the word ‘no’.

***

The doctors still haven’t come to tell them Eliot’s dead by the time Nate and Sophie arrive. Nate looks harried, a word that fits him better than it could ever fit Sophie, who’s pale under her make-up but still far more in control. 

Hardison heaves a sob as Sophie reaches him, pulling him into a hug as he stands, and Parker stays where she is in her seat, knees pulled up so she can hug them. She wanted to reach out to Hardison, she did, but she couldn’t seem to get herself to move over all those long hours with no answers. 

“Is he…?” Nate asks, and Parker can imagine how he’ll find a bar as soon as they finally get the news, or how he’ll pick up a bottle and try to crawl inside it to hide. “Have they…?”

Nathan Ford, who thought his way to the end of a thousand brilliant plans while she worked with him, can’t get to the end of a sentence.

“We don’t know,” she says, looking more at the patch of discoloration on the wall behind his head than at him. “They still haven’t come and said.”

“Then he must still be in surgery.” Sophie sounds so sure. “They must still be working on saving him.”

Parker knows it’s too late for that, the feeling solid in her brain, but she stays quiet. Hardison didn’t want to hear it, either, even though he was the one who almost broke and said they’d lost him back in that parking lot. Belief’s hard. It seems easier not to have it. 

“Parker,” Sophie says, sinking to the seat next to her as Hardison moves to hugging Nate nearby. “Parker, we can’t lose hope.”

“You didn’t see him,” Parker says. “He was quiet and still. When’s Eliot ever quiet and still? And there was so much blood. We’ll need to get him a good casket. Something he’ll like.”

She doesn’t need Sophie’s indrawn breath to know what she’s said is too far over that line marked ‘normal’ that she has to try not to cross on a con. It’s her family around her, though, and she’s not meant to have to worry about that line around her family. Maybe the rules are different when someone’s dead. 

“We can’t-” Sophie starts, but breaks off as a doctor appears behind Nate, a clipboard in his hand.

“Mr Tyler?” the doctor asks, looking between Hardison and Nate. When Hardison nods, pulling just far enough away from Nate that there’s space between them, but with his hand still on Nate’s arm, the doctor goes on. “You’re Mr Smith’s next of kin?”

“Yeah,” Hardison says, and Parker tries to remember what relationship these two aliases have with each other. Partners, she thinks. Maybe husbands. She doesn’t think it’s one where Eliot’s her brother, but it can be hard to keep track. “Is he… Is he alive?”

Parker tries to get her fingers to unlock so she can go to Hardison, to Alec, and slip her hand through his free one, but she still can’t move from this chair. She feels Sophie set her hand on Parker’s forearm. 

“He’s alive. He had to be resuscitated again in the ambulance and we lost him three times on the table,” the doctor says, “but he’s out of immediate danger.”

Of course he’s out of danger, Parker thinks. You can’t be in danger when you’re dead. 

“Can we see him?” Nate asks and waves a hand when the doctor looks at him. “He’s our family, too. When can we see him? What sort of damage is there? How long-?”

“I’m afraid it’s too early to know about recovery,” the doctor says. “He’s only just stable. You can see him, but he won’t be awake.”

“How’s he going to recover from being dead?” Parker asks the room. 

She catches the look on the doctor’s face, but she can’t translate it. Doesn’t try to. Hardison’s face appears, close to her. He’s crouching in front of her chair, and he puts one of his hands on her knee. There are still tears in his eyes.

“Eliot’s not dead, mama,” he says. “Eliot’s alive.”

Parker can’t remember if Eliot is the name Hardison should be using, but she can’t bring herself to care. Nothing he’s saying is making any sense. 

“Alive?” She frowns. “But I felt him die. There was so much blood.”

She sees Hardison’s face move the way it does when he’s sad, but with that particular twist to it that means he’s sad for her. She hates that face. She likes it when he looks at her with admiration and warmth and trust, not pity. Whatever’s been holding her still lets go and she pushes to her feet, seeing Hardison and Sophie both back off, Hardison rising so he towers over them all again. 

“He died,” she says. “I know he died. He’s dead.”

“The doctor says we can see him,” Sophie says. “Come and see him, Parker. You’ll see he’s not… You’ll see he’s alive. Eliot’s alive.”

She shakes her head, but she lets them lead her through the hallways until they reach a room full of beeping and tubes and a feeling of inbetween. And there’s the body that used to be Eliot, mostly covered by a white sheet and plugged into the machines. There isn’t any blood now.

“You see?” Hardison says. “He’s still with us, baby. We didn’t lose him.”

They can tell her he’s still with them as much as they like, but Parker doesn’t see Eliot. She just sees the flesh he used to live in. She only realizes she’s crying when Hardison wraps her up in a hug, and she can’t even make herself run.


	2. Return

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Eliot wakes up back in his body. The team worry about him.

Eliot looks small. It’s the first thing that strikes Sophie when she sees him in that bed, and it’s what her mind dwells on once Nate’s managed to get Parker and Hardison to go back to their loft to rest. Eliot looks far too small and she can’t work out if it’s because she’s getting a false image of him, lying in that bed, or if she’s only now seeing what he really looks like. Eliot’s always been the second best grifter on their crew. 

The chair she’s sitting in is hard and it’s starting to send parts of her to sleep. She flexes a foot, but the faint wash of pins and needles doesn’t do much. She could stand and pace, but that feels wrong. Besides, if anyone comes in and sees Eliot’s older sister pacing they might try to talk to her, or ask her if she needs anything, and what she needs is for Eliot to wake up and be perfectly okay. 

From what the doctors have said, that isn’t likely. 

She thinks Parker wasn’t listening as they were told about how long it took them to bring Eliot back the last time, but she knows Nate and Hardison were. She’s sure Hardison is still up, staring at his screens, researching every possible thing he can about brain trauma. 

Footsteps in the hallway tell her Nate’s on his way back. She should persuade him to leave. Hospitals are hard for him, harder even than they are for the rest of them, but for once she isn’t sure of the best way to approach something. Maybe he needs to be here, to feel he’s doing that much at least for a man who’s looked after them so often.

By the time Nate walks in, Sophie has her face clean of tears. She has no intention of conning Nate, but there’s such a thing as being sensitive to a person’s needs, and Nate doesn’t need to feel Sophie’s falling apart just now. There’ll be time for that later, if it’s needed.

“No change?” Nate asks from just inside the doorway. He hasn’t been closer to Eliot than he’s had to be since they were let into this room. 

“No. But all the…the beeping has been steady. That has to be good, right?” Sophie says, waving a hand at a monitor. “And they said it could be a while before he wakes up.”

“They said he might not wake up at all,” Nate says. There’s a pause and his jaw is tight when he speaks again. “Parker’s still insisting Eliot’s…that he’s… You don’t think she’s right? That we’re just conning ourselves with these machines?”

“Parker thought I was a ghost when we faked my death,” Sophie tells him, rising and going to him. “She’s brilliant and they’ve been doing so well working just the three of them, but she’s still Parker. She’ll work her way through this.”

Nate nods and reaches for her, and Sophie lets him pull her into a hug. 

“When he wakes up, we’ll have to be prepared,” Nate says into her shoulder. “The loft might need work. We’ll have to get Hardison to look into it.”

Sophie doesn’t point out that they have no idea yet of what Eliot will need, or if he’ll need anything. He’s come round from hits before that should have floored him and walked off injuries that should by rights have maimed if not killed him. Nate needs to have something to plan. 

“Whatever he needs, we’ll get it for him,” Sophie agrees. 

She strokes a hand down Nate’s back and refuses to let herself think about what that could mean. Eliot always looked…looks…like he doesn’t need anything, unless you look closely. Eliot isn’t supposed to seem like he needs anything. 

***

Fighting his way back up the slope always takes effort. Eliot has to haul himself up the last stretch, has to make himself fit back into the body he’s now only got on a lease. It never feels quite right, coming back to undertake whatever mission he’s on, and by the times it’s done he’s partway ready to scrap whatever life he’s wearing and start again. 

Being dead inside a body he only recently called his is worse, in a lot of ways, than being properly dead. At least when he feels so little it’s hard to feel bile rising at how he doesn’t fit right around his own bones.

Beeping filters in and he becomes aware of points of contact, of pinches on his skin and something in his throat. The beeping rises, louder and faster, and there are voices, telling him to be calm, telling him to stay still.

He does his best to obey. Wherever the gods have sent him, he needs to wait until their commands come clear in his head before he acts. He may need to fight his way out of this, but he might not. 

“Can you hear me, Mr Smith?” a voice asks. Not one he knows, but that’s no surprise. He’s almost taken aback by it being an American accent. Last few times, he’s been flung clear across the world from the life he’s leaving. “Do you know where you are?”

The tube’s gone now, so he must have lost time somewhere in there, and he manages to rasp out an answer. He isn’t sure what he says, but it seems to be enough. He blinks his eyes open and sees people around him, sees ceiling tiles and lighting that confirm he’s in a hospital. The voice talks on about surgery and being fortunate and needing to observe and review and construct plans, and Eliot can’t work out why the gods would send him back to a broken form. Maybe he needs to be injured for his mission to work. There was that time he came back to find his right hand had been taken. 

“And your family will be pleased to hear you’re awake,” the doctor says.

Eliot’s attention snaps to her.

“What? What family?”

The words hurt, physically hurt, in his throat, and the pain of his loss wells up, hot and close, the way it never could when he was by that river. His last memory of Parker and Hardison is panic and worry, and he wishes he could see them again. He’s never been allowed to go back, though. 

It only takes a few more questions for the doctor to start talking in a way Eliot knows means new notes will be added to his chart. Possible damage to his brain. Memories hazy or gone. He gives in and goes with it, because his instructions haven’t arrived yet and perhaps this family is where he’s meant to be. 

“We’ve contacted them,” the doctor says, in what’s probably meant to be a soothing tone of voice. “They’ll be coming to see you soon. Will that be okay?”

He doesn’t know what answer he gives, but he sees the doctor’s concern. It’s well-hidden behind her mask of professionalism, but Eliot’s grifting skills have only improved since meeting Sophie, who he’s sometimes suspected of being part-god herself. 

“They waited here until you were out of surgery,” the doctor tells him, as though the issue might be Eliot thinking this family doesn’t care about him. “I can ask that only one of them visits you. Your sister, perhaps?”

This time, he knows he just stares at her. He can’t quite see properly, the shadows clustering thickly in the room and strands of darkness clinging to the doctor. Death. She’s been close to death a lot and he can see it. He finds himself tracing the pattern of one looping strand and hears the adjustment in the way the doctor speaks: she’s worried about his state of mind.

“Mr Smith, you’ve been through a trauma. No-one is going to rush you. If you want to heal quietly, that’s your choice. It can help with a patient’s emotional recovery to have their loved ones about them. You let me know if you’re ready to see someone, okay?”

Eliot manages to focus back on her face to find gray eyes watching him. He flinches and hears a beeping rise in speed. Rushing water fills his ears and his body is numb, disconnected.

“Mr Smith? Mr Smith, can you hear me?”

With a gasp, he pulls himself back. Not gray eyes. The doctor doesn’t have gray eyes. They’re a clear green, fresh and more caring than is probably good for her, surrounded by death as she is. 

“I can hear you,” he gets out. Even to his own ears, he sounds like he’s been struggling. Gods know what they’ll be making of this. “I…yeah. Okay. I’ll see my…my sister.”

The doctor nods, but she insists on checking his responses and asking him more questions before she leaves. Eliot follows the light she shines in his eyes and pretends not to see the shadows. 

***

He’s awake. Eliot’s awake. 

Hardison keeps his attention on his tablet, still searching for the guy who put Eliot in that hospital bed. Having something to do is important, and this is something he can do. No way is he letting this one go. Eliot will want to know the threat’s been dealt with, that he isn’t going to catch another bullet. 

Eliot will want to know Parker and Hardison aren’t going to find themselves on the wrong end of that gun, Hardison knows, but he can’t let himself dwell on that. Once Eliot’s well enough, they’re going to have a long talk about looking after himself as well as he looks after his team, because the panic and worry Hardison’s gone through in the last few days have to be enough to wipe years off his life. 

“Why can’t we all go and see him?” Parker asks. 

“Because the doctor says Eliot isn’t up to it,” Sophie says from the front seat. She’s driving. She’s been doing a lot of things for all of them since she got back to Portland. “We don’t want to overwhelm him, Parker. He’s been through a massive trauma and you heard what the doctor said.”

“That he didn’t seem to remember us,” Parker says, dismissal clear in her tone. “But that’s stupid. Eliot always knows who we are. And he’s been shot before. He walked it off.”

Hardison still isn’t sure how Eliot managed that, but this time is different. That much is clear. 

“We gotta let Eliot have time, mama,” he says. “If he wants to see Sophie first, then we let him, okay? His choice.”

His choice. It’s something they’ve reminded each other of so many times over the last few years. His choice what risks to take. His choice whether to stay with them or not. His choice to tell them what they mean to him. 

Parker looks at him. She nods, her eyes unhappy.

“His choice,” she says.

Still, Hardison has to wonder why it’s Sophie Eliot wants to see. His mind spins too easily to Eliot wanting tips on how to con them, something he halfway thinks the guy would do if it meant hiding the extent of his injuries from them. Hardison comforts himself with the knowledge he can access Eliot’s medical records. He knows exactly how bad Eliot’s injuries are. 

He’s also seen the extra notes pop up, the ones suggesting they didn’t get him back quickly enough to prevent brain trauma. Those are the ones he’s keeping to himself, just for now.

***

When he drifts back to consciousness, Eliot hears voices outside his room. One is the doctor, still professional, still worried. The other is a far too familiar voice. Maybe, somehow, she’s found a way to con the gods. If anybody could, it would be her. 

When the door opens, spilling brighter light in a bar across the floor, he winces and blinks. A figure steps into the room, moving with a particular kind of grace, and he doesn’t need to see her properly to know her. Shadows surround her, but they don’t cling: whatever else Sophie Devereaux is, she is nothing to do with death.

“Sophie,” he says. Rasps. 

“Oh, Eliot,” she says, and is by his side. He isn’t sure if he blinked and missed her moving or if his senses aren’t working right. “Eliot, how are you? Can I do anything for you?”

She must read something in his face, because she pauses and glances round, and a moment later she’s pulling up a chair and sitting down. 

“I’ll tell you what,” she says. “You and I will talk for a while, shall we? Catch up. We don’t get to talk as much as we used to.”

She says it like a pot of tea and a plate of cakes will show up any minute and they’ll gossip, like that’s something they ever really did. Homemade baklava and catching up on relevant details about people don’t count. 

“Sure,” he says, because his mind is reeling and he can only latch on to her lead. “What’ve I missed?”

“Well, someone got himself shot and has been making us all worry,” Sophie says. She almost buries the hurt in her voice. “Parker’s still insisting you’re dead, by the way. You might want to be very clear that you aren’t a zombie.”

He wants to tell her he’ll try, but the problem is Parker’s halfway right. He can feel all the spaces where he doesn’t fit in this body anymore. It might show up to an outsider, or it might not. That’s something that always varies. He can’t, in all honesty, say the zombie comment is as wrong as he’d like it to be. 

“Doctors said I did die,” he says, because that feels safe. He can say that without feeling like he’s lying.

“Yes, well. Even so.”

“Are Parker and Hardison okay?” he asks. He doesn’t know if he did enough to keep them safe, back in that parking lot. “Did they make it out all right?”

Parker thinking he’s dead doesn’t mean Parker’s uninjured herself. It just means she’s alive.

“They both made it out fine, Eliot,” she says, every word dripping with the kind of sincerity that means she wants to be very sure he hears her. “You kept them safe.”

“I promised,” he says, and lets himself sink a little further back into the bed. 

It’s more than he’s had before, knowing he got his people to safety when he goes. There’ll be a reason he’s allowed this, but he doesn’t want to look at it too closely. Just for a little while, he wants to let himself feel relief without worrying why he’s been granted this.

“You did,” Sophie says. 

There’s a catch in her voice. He doesn’t think about that too closely, either. 

“Tell me what you and Nate have been up to,” Eliot says.

He closes his eyes again as Sophie launches into a tale about the owner of a chain of bars on the East coast, and how they decided the guy didn’t have the right to treat his workers the way he was. If she pauses a little at odd places or if she fumbles for words a time or two, he can overlook it. 

***

“I want to see him,” Parker says, pacing along the far wall of the waiting room and avoiding eye-contact.

It’s the fifth time she’s said that in twenty minutes and Hardison aches to hold her and soothe her. She let him do that the first night, once Nate chased them home, but since then she’s pulled away. 

“He decided Sophie would go in first,” he reminds her. “She’ll let us know when he can cope with seeing the rest of us.”

“It’s us,” Parker says, putting an emphasis on the second word. “Eliot can cope with us. Eliot loves us. You know he does.”

Hardison does know. He also knows they talked about it, Parker and him, and decided it’s one of those things Eliot gets to choose. Right here, with Nate watching, isn’t the time to bring that up again. 

“Eliot’s not at his best,” Nate says. “We need to let Sophie tell us when to go in.”

“But he loves us,” Parker says. She has her arms wrapped around herself and she’s frowning. “Even now he’s dead he still loves us.”

And that’s another thing. Parker is Parker and he wouldn’t change her if he could, but sometimes she latches on to an idea that hurts her and he wishes he could work out how to help her let go. She won’t accept that Eliot made it through. She’s only got as far as believing he’s still dead but somehow awake. 

“Loving someone doesn’t mean you always want them piling on top of you when you’re injured,” Hardison tells her. “Sophie will come get us soon.”

He glances down the hallway in the direction of Eliot’s room. If it wouldn’t send Parker running ahead of him, he’d be tempted to take a little walk that way and just stick his head through the door. Just to check he really is awake like they’ve been told.

Sophie appears as he’s watching and he sees Parker land in front of her.

“Well?” Parker demands.

Sophie moves past and ushers Parker back with her until they’re all standing in a circle in the waiting room. She looks sad, but steady. Not that it means much. Hardison has never been able to see through Sophie the way Nate and Eliot sometimes can.

“He’s awake and he knows who he is,” she says. “I don’t know if he’s fully with us, but some of what he said to the doctors must have been because he couldn’t remember which cover went with the name.”

“Eliot always remembers his covers,” Parker says, frowning again.

“But he hasn’t forgotten us the way the doctors worried he might have,” Sophie goes on. “He’s tired and we shouldn’t wear him out, but he says he’ll see you.”

Hardison sags in relief. At last. As soon as he sees Eliot he can start getting a better idea of what his man will need, and then they can move things forward. And Parker will have to start believing Eliot’s alive when she sees him.

“Does dead Eliot look like normal Eliot?” Parker asks, still with her arms crossed. “He hasn’t got bits missing or anything?”

Sophie’s still assuring Parker that Eliot isn’t a zombie when they make it into his room, and Hardison loses track of what she’s saying. Eliot looked terrible before, when he was asleep, so it shouldn’t be such a shock, but some part of him must have been expecting Eliot to spring back up all raring to go. Instead, he looks like he should be staying in that bed for months. 

He doesn’t remember ever seeing Eliot look so gray.

“Are you going to eat my brains?” Parker asks, stopping at the foot of the bed. 

Eliot smiles, but it’s delayed, like he’s had to remind himself to do it, and Hardison sees pain around his eyes. The guy’s probably refusing to take his drugs or something and Hardison will have to have words with him about that. 

“I ain’t gonna eat any part of you, Parker,” Eliot says.

“Oh.” Parker sounds halfway reassured and halfway disappointed.

Through the shock and the worry and the relief that they haven’t lost part of their family, Hardison still finds room for a fervent hope that Parker won’t suggest a way Eliot could eat- No. He isn’t going to even think it. Thinking it might make it real. He doesn’t think he can cope with that on top of everything else.

Besides, if Eliot was ever going to make a move, he’d have done it already. It’s been years since they met and almost two since Sophie and Nate went their own way. He’s gone as far as he can to hint to Eliot that making said move wouldn’t be a betrayal, even if he just wants one of them, but Eliot hasn’t ever taken that step. He hasn’t mentioned many one-night stands or dates to them, either, but maybe he just thinks they aren’t interested in hearing it. 

“You see?” Sophie says. “No-one’s eating anyone’s brains. And Eliot’s alive. Aren’t you, Eliot?”

Again, Eliot hesitates. 

“You’re alive, man,” Hardison says. “I get this ain’t the worst place you’ve ever woken up, but it ain’t Heaven. We ain’t all a bunch of angels hanging out ready to hand you your harp.”

“I didn’t think it’d be Heaven, Hardison,” Eliot says. 

His voice is way weaker than Hardison was ready for, like it hasn’t made it all the way back from whatever dark place Eliot went to when he was fighting for his life. But they’ll work on that. From what he’s seen so far, Eliot’s in far better shape than he could have been, so they can get him home as soon as possible and get him well. Maybe Sophie and Nate will stick around for a while to see it done.

“When can you come home?” Parker asks, still from the foot of the bed. 

Sophie cuts in, explaining the doctors haven’t decided yet, but Parker doesn’t really seem to be listening. She has a look on her face that says she’s working something out. 

“You’re not planning on coming home,” she blurts out, cutting across Sophie, and Eliot freezes. 

It’s not like he was moving much already, but he goes so still it’s like he’s carved from stone. 

“Eliot?” Nate asks. 

That’s all it takes, from Nate. Eliot drops his gaze, going from not quite looking at any of them to definitely not looking at anyone. A moment later, he swallows and shuts his eyes. 

“I don’t know if I can,” he says, which makes no sense. 

“Soon as the doctors get you all fixed up you can,” Hardison tells him. “We’ll get you anything you need. Hell, we can make you up a hospital bed if you need one. But a way better one than this. It’ll be like sickbay on the Enterprise. Hell, I’ll even hire you pretty nurses if you want.”

“Hardison,” Sophie says, but she doesn’t sound like she’s totally rejecting the idea.

Eliot blinks his eyes back open and almost looks at Hardison. 

“All right,” he says. “You get on that.”

And Hardison feels something loosen in his chest. Eliot’s alive and he’s awake and he’s going to come home, where he belongs, and they can all make it real clear to the guy how much he means to them. It’s going to be tough, sure. Hardison’s no fool. But they’ll make it.


	3. Trying

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The team try to help Eliot, but he doesn't seem to want their help.

Sophie insists they all take shifts visiting with Eliot. It’s clear from the very first conversation with him that his recovery is going to be long. She meant it when she said he’s in better shape than he could be, but there were pauses and gaps and places where he seemed to drift away from her, and Sophie keeps expecting the doctors to start talking more about damage to his mind. 

For the next few days, Eliot’s quiet. Sometimes he’s unresponsive, even when he’s awake. The doctors check him over but it’s not that Eliot can’t hear them. It just seems to be that it’s too much for him to answer.

“Depression?” Hardison asks. “Shock? It’s gotta be some kind of emotional response, right? Like, people can have all sorts of hinky reactions to strokes.”

“It wasn’t a stroke,” Parker says, as though she’s helping. “It was a bullet.”

“Yeah, but it’s gotta to have affected the blood to his brain,” Hardison says. “Messed with his chemicals and all that. They just gotta slosh back into place.”

But there’s that thread of nervousness under what he says and even Parker looks troubled. Sophie reminds herself they’ve been living with Eliot for two years longer than she and Nate have. From the look of the Brewpub, even though Eliot has his own place somewhere in town, ‘living with’ is almost right. 

So she might spend more than her fair share of time with him when he seems especially low, when it’s hard to get any kind of reaction from him. She can cope with it. She hasn’t got the awful memories of sitting in a hospital and just waiting for the end that Nate has, even if Nate never entirely accepted that was what he was doing at the time. And she loves Eliot, but she’s not quite in the same boat as Hardison and Parker on that one. Out of all of them, Sophie can bear up under this the best, so she takes it on herself to do just that.

Which is why she’s the one sitting by his bedside when Eliot starts awake and stares into the air in front of him as though he’s seeing something.

“Eliot?” she asks, setting down her magazine and sliding to the edge of her chair. She doesn’t quite dare set a hand down on the bed, let alone on Eliot. A junior doctor learned the hard way on the second night that startling Eliot is not a good idea, and PTSD has been added to his chart. Sophie had to do some fast talking to persuade them restraints weren’t needed. “Eliot, what is it? Are you awake?”

He looks awake, his eyes fixed on something, but his breathing is fast and shallow. It’s possible he’s in the midst of some dream. 

“Eliot?”

His gaze snaps to her, his whole body going rigid, and for one moment Sophie debates leaving her chair and backing towards the door. Eliot would never deliberately hurt her. It’s the sort of truth that’s bone-deep. But… It could just be Parker’s repeated insistence that Eliot’s not really alive anymore, but Sophie has the creeping feeling it isn’t entirely their Eliot lying in this bed.

The moment passes, and Eliot sags. She’s seen him look sad before, mostly in the days since the shooting, and she wishes she could find a way to wipe it away for him. She knows better than that, though. 

“Will you tell me what you were seeing?” she asks, because listening to him is something she can do.

“You wouldn’t believe me,” he says, voice a tired rasp, and shuts his eyes. 

When morning comes, Eliot still hasn’t opened his eyes again, but Sophie is certain he’s been awake the whole time.

***

Sophie’s right there. Shit. She’s right there and she sees him react to the waters. 

He can hear them almost all the time, at the edge of hearing, but sometimes they rise and he expects the cold to surround him and drag him down. The shadows always get stronger and the water always sits just over the horizon when he’s in this phase, and he hates it. He hates the constant reminder that he’s only partly in the land of the living, as though his own body doesn’t tell him that with every breath he takes but isn’t sure he needs.

Sometimes, though, the rushing of the river grows so strong he can’t ignore it. And more than once since he came back, he’s thought he can hear her voice, too. This time, he must have been dreaming, because the woman from the riverlands has never walked the earth that he’s seen, so she can’t have been standing at the foot of his bed. She can’t have been.

He doesn’t tell Sophie how scared he is that she’ll see through him. He doesn’t tell her how grateful he is that she’s there.

***

Nate waits over a week before he takes a case. More than one potential client has been by the Brewpub, the staff handing messages to Nate when Parker and Hardison brush them off. Amy pats Nate’s arm as she hands him the latest one, her expression showing how much Eliot means to more than just the crew.

“You should get back to your studies,” Nate tells her, but he knows his words lack conviction. He just doesn’t have the energy to sell the part.

Amy shrugs and brushes her hair back from her face, even though it’s already in a tidy plait. 

“It doesn’t feel right,” she says. “It feels like I should be here.”

And Nate knows that feeling too well, so even though Amy is only meant to work part-time, occasionally as a semi-involved member of the team, he just smiles and watches her go back to the bar. She’s the one who’s stepped in to run the place with Eliot being out of commission, and it’s clear in every quiet word she says and every steady action she takes that she intends to look after Eliot’s restaurant until he can claim it back. 

Eliot’s refused to let her visit him. Her or any of the staff, some of whom have been working at the place too long for safety. He’s said no to Toby and to old friends from his days working for the government and to anyone being told who doesn’t already know. Nate’s tried to tell himself it’s because Eliot thinks he’ll be back on form before they could need to know, but there’s a niggling sense that the guy’s just checked out of his own life. 

Maybe they do need to broach the depression issue. God knows, Eliot didn’t shy away from calling Nate on his crap, but that was more about taking dangerous decisions. 

Nate turns the card Amy’s brought him over and over in his hand as he thinks. 

The team is no longer his concern. He handed that responsibility over to Parker, or maybe to Eliot, or to all three of them. It isn’t clear just now, when all he sees in his mind’s eye is Eliot lying so still and small and quiet in that bed. Taking jobs isn’t what he does. He retired. Sophie and he retired.

True, they might take on the odd job, here or there, when they run across someone who needs the help, but they don’t seek them out. 

Of course, Parker and Hardison are still used to working on jobs regularly. And Nate was told, so many times back when Sam was sick, that he should keep life as normal as possible. He never listened. He wonders if it would have changed anything.

When he calls Hardison through to the office and shows him the card, Hardison shakes his head. Nate could be wrong, but it looks like Hardison’s eyes are puffy. 

“Nah. Nah, we are not taking on a job. Are you smoking something? We got Eliot to think about.” Hardison pauses only long enough to turn his tablet around, giving Nate a glimpse of a screen crowded with more information than he can take in during the second he’s given. “I gotta work out what we need for when he comes home and what therapy he might need and if there’re any doctors we need to fly in. And that’s before I get to the psychology journals I found. I ain’t got time to help someone dig out from under a burden I didn’t put there.”

Nate allows a beat before he answers. 

“You didn’t put there?” he asks. 

Hardison opens his mouth, stares at Nate for a long moment, and looks away without speaking. 

“Hardison,” Nate says, “you didn’t get Eliot hurt.”

There’s silence for long enough he considers speaking again, but eventually Hardison nods, a tight, unhappy movement, and taps at something on his screen. 

“I missed a guy,” he says. “Still can’t track him down. So, yeah, I kinda did.”

“We’ve all missed things,” Nate says. “Eliot would tell you it wasn’t on you. He takes the hits so you don’t have to. Remember that?”

“Yeah, well, this wasn’t a hit he should have had to take, all right?” Hardison says, and turns away. He doesn’t go anywhere, but his back’s almost to Nate. “And quit talking about him like he’s dead. Eliot feels that way, he can damn well tell me himself, instead of staring at nothing and acting out some Little Mermaid role. Man’s behaving like someone stole his damn voice.”

Nate doesn’t push Hardison any further on Eliot, but he does walk across and slide the card onto the counter next to Hardison. 

“We won’t be abandoning him by taking one job,” he says. “If we can do it safely, without a hitter, it’ll be something to focus on. We can involve him in the planning. It might help.”

There’s another of those pauses Nate is getting used to.

“You mean, give him something to think about?” Hardison asks slowly. “Yeah. Yeah, that might help. A target, that’s what Eliot needs. Purpose. He hates sitting around doing nothing. Man has to full on meditate or go murdering fish before he can talk himself into sitting still, like it needs a goal other than just…sitting. A job might help him pull out of whatever it is he’s got going on in his head. But only if it isn’t dangerous, all right? I don’t need Parker getting hurt. I already-”

He cuts off, but Nate is almost certain he knows what Hardison was going to say. He doesn’t insist on completing the sentence himself.

***

Parker sits on one side of Eliot’s bed as Hardison runs them through what they have on the job. Eliot’s quiet and she has to check more than once to see he’s still got his eyes open. He doesn’t look happy, but happy Eliot isn’t quite like most happy people anyway, and she supposes being dead can be a mood killer. 

Heh, killer. She probably shouldn’t make a joke about killing. Not right now. She’ll save it for later, when everyone isn’t so sad.

“So, we just need to prove those artifacts are stolen and we can get the guy to pay up what he owes our client,” she says, when Hardison’s finished with the breakdown. “Easy. We’ve done that sort of thing a thousand times.”

“Should be straightforward,” Nate says, nodding at Parker. “How do you want to play it?”

They fall into a discussion of cons, Sophie vetoing at least three because they won’t have a hitter and Hardison poking holes in most of the rest for basically the same reason. Eliot says nothing. 

“You got an opinion?” Parker asks him in a lull. 

He blinks, and she swears he wasn’t in the room with them, there.

“Don’t see why you’re asking me,” he says, a disturbing lack of heat in his words. “I can’t be any help.”

“You can tell us if we’ve missed something,” Sophie says. “Eliot, you spot things the rest of us miss. You can still do that.”

“And you’ll be back to normal in no time,” Hardison says, in a tone no-one even pretends sounds convincing. “Then you can hit all the people you want. Be Mr Punchy all you like.”

Eliot scowls and for a moment Parker thinks he’s going to snap at Hardison. For Eliot, it’s a kind of happiness, and she leans forward in expectation. 

Instead, he blinks again, and his face crumples. It’s nothing like as dramatic as it would be on Hardison, but for Eliot it’s like watching someone break down completely. She’s almost sure there are tears, just in the edges of his eyes. 

“Eliot?” she says. 

She can’t move, can’t shift off this seat to even try and comfort him, but she shares a look with Sophie and watches as the older woman leans in and takes one of Eliot’s hands. 

“Eliot,” Sophie says, and goes as far as brushing back the hair from Eliot’s face, her hand sliding over his head. Eliot just looks more devastated than he already did. “Eliot, tell us what’s wrong. Let us help you.”

Eliot shakes his head and Parker sees Nate and Hardison doing the same thing she is, waiting and watching as Sophie strokes Eliot’s hair again, her body angled so he’s her sole focus.

“Is it because we’re taking a job? Because it doesn’t mean we’re moving on without you. And you can still help. And you are one of the strongest people I’ve ever known. You’ll get back to work, when you’re ready.”

“No,” Eliot says at last. His mouth works around the word. “No, I won’t.”

Parker’s on her feet and picking up Eliot’s chart before Hardison can reach it. She scans the pages, flipping through for anything new. They’ve scanned him and poked him and taken samples from him, and they all know it still isn’t good. The doctors have refused to say whether he’ll make a full recovery. They haven’t said he’ll definitely not, though.

“What’ve the doctors said?” Nate asks. 

It looks like Eliot won’t answer, until Sophie tilts her head and shifts an eyebrow and exudes such warmth that it’s hard to see how anyone could resist her. 

“It’s not them,” Eliot says. “I don’t need them to tell me. Parker was right. I don’t get to come back from this one. You should just…just go and do your thing. Let me be. This ain’t helping.”

She’s right? Oh.

“You’re saying you know you’re dead,” she says, and hears Hardison swear. “But you’re still here, Eliot. You can just be dead and still part of the team.”

This time, Eliot latches onto her and she shivers. She doesn’t know how the others don’t see it, the grave that’s leached into him. He’s still Eliot, but he’s also…not.

“I’m not gonna be back here for long, Parker,” he says. “You need to get used to that. Okay?”

“What do you mean?” she asks.

She sees Sophie’s expression, sees her hand still on Eliot’s head, but no-one else gets in the way of Eliot speaking with Parker. In some way, it’s always been the two of them who’ve understood each other. She just doesn’t want to understand this.

“I mean, you’re right. I’m dead, and the dead don’t get to stay with the living.”

And Eliot refuses to say anything else after that, shutting his eyes and shutting them out, until Sophie demands they all leave to let Eliot rest.


	4. Refusal

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Eliot tells them some of what's happening.

“The man thinks he’s already dead,” Hardison says, gesturing at nothing as he paces across the living space in their loft. “That’s past being hazy on a few memories. I have read a mountain of research on brain trauma and depression and PTSD, but I don’t know how to handle this. Do you know how to handle this? Because I got nothing.”

He stops, jabbing a hand in Nate’s direction, then in Sophie’s. When he looks at Parker, she shrugs. 

“None of you have any more idea than I do,” Hardison says, and feels something in him drop even lower than it already was. “Sophie, you don’t got any sort of grifter trick to shake him out of it?”

“I’m afraid not,” Sophie says. “Grifting can get you inside someone’s mind in that you can pull on their strings, but it doesn’t mean you can heal their minds when they’re hurting. If Eliot were a mark, I’d use his delusion if I needed to, but I’d feel awful, playing on someone so…so…”

She shrugs, and takes a drink from her wine. Hardison sees how tightly she’s gripping the glass. 

“So broken,” Parker says, and nods decisively. “You’re saying Eliot’s broken, in his head.” She pauses and frowns. “And in his body.”

“I’m saying he’s hurting too badly for us to do this ourselves,” Sophie says. “Nate, I don’t think we can keep this to ourselves.” 

“It’s not up to me,” Nate says.

Sophie glances at Parker, at Hardison, and nods.

“No. No, it isn’t, is it? Parker, Hardison, I really think we need to speak to Eliot’s doctors. Maybe the confusion when he first woke up wasn’t just being unsure about his cover. We shouldn’t hide this from them. They can help him.”

“They can’t stop him from being dead,” Parker says.

Hardison wants to scream. She won’t shift on that one. It has to be guilt. It must be because his girl is still struggling to cope with Eliot being so badly hurt on what she sees as her watch, even though Hardison is the one who missed that guy, and his man…well. He isn’t even sure if he’s really allowed to think of Eliot that way. Not for the first time, he wonders what exactly Eliot thinks he is to them.

“He isn’t dead, Parker,” Hardison says. “He just…he just thinks he is. You gotta stop saying he’s dead. It ain’t helping him, feeding into his delusion. Right, Sophie?”

“Like I said, I’m not an expert on this,” Sophie says. “I manipulate people. I can make a good go of a bit of counseling, but I’m always trying to get them round to what I want them to think in that moment. It isn’t the same thing. But I can’t see it helping him.”

“You want us to tell on Eliot?” Parker asks, and that’s the face she pulls when she really doesn’t like what she’s hearing. “You want us to tell the doctors that Eliot’s crazy.”

“Hurting, mama,” Hardison says. “He’s lost and he’s hurting. They’ll know how to help him.”

Parker still looks unhappy, but she agrees to let Sophie speak to the doctors about it, and if Hardison feels a little like he’s betraying Eliot, he can live with that if it means they get the guy the help he so clearly needs. He can. It’ll be worth it when Eliot’s back to himself.

***

Sophie shakes the doctor’s hand and leaves to find the others. She finds them all in Eliot’s room, staring at the TV on the wall, the one that’s suspiciously new and large for a hospital room. There’s a game on she’s almost sure Eliot should love, but he’s staring at a point a few inches in front of his face, his eyes half closed.

“What did they say?” Parker asks, and glances at Eliot with an apology on her face. 

“What did who say about what?” Eliot asks, sounding as though he doesn’t entirely care. A second later he opens his eyes fully and glares at Sophie. It’s weak, more an attempt than anything, but it’s clear he’s not pleased. “You been to see the doctors about me? This about what I said yesterday?”

“Eliot, it’s for your own good,” Sophie says. It is. She knows it is. “They’ll know how to help you.”

The grimace on his face looks like real pain, and she takes a step towards him before he holds one hand up, just off the bedding, stopping her.

“No. No, I don’t need that kinda help. I don’t need any of you here, sitting around wanting me to pretend it’s all gonna be okay. This must be why they don’t send me back to where I was. It just gets in the way.”

“Who doesn’t send you?” Nate asks, calmly enough that Eliot doesn’t seem to realize he’s said anything unusual.

He shut down yesterday when they tried to get him to say more about what was going on in his head, but now his anger seems to have loosened his tongue.

“The gods,” he spits out. It’s weak, but it’s closer to how Eliot used to sound than he’s managed so far. “They always send me back before I stay dead, but I ain’t ever gone back to the people I know before. Can’t say it’s working out.”

“Why do they send you back?” Sophie asks. She doesn’t try to argue with him about gods, but it sends a chill through her. He’s further from reality than she thought. “What do they want of you?”

“A mission,” he says. “There’s always a mission. Only they haven’t told me what it is yet. So I gotta stay here, stuck in this dead body that used to be mine and watching you all worry about me getting well when it ain’t ever gonna happen. And now you’ve dragged the doctors into it. They’re gonna poke and prod and go over every little thing I say and scrawl all over those charts of theirs, and it ain’t gonna change anything, either. So just…just leave. I don’t want you here. Any of you. Go on. Get out!”

And he presses the button to call the nurse. Sophie sees Parker’s eyes, wide and disbelieving, but Nate gets her and Hardison moving and Sophie goes with them. Eliot’s far too upset to reason with just now, even if he were entirely steady in his mind. She still thinks they had to tell the medical staff, but she wishes it hadn’t lead to Eliot rejecting them. 

Her last view of him is of him slumping back to the bed, such pain on his face that she wants to go back in and gather him into a hug. Instead, she turns away and walks.

***

Eliot puts up with the questions from the doctors as long as he can, but they’re starting to get this look on their faces that make him wonder whether he’ll need to pick a lock to get out, and he already has injuries that aren’t healing. He’s not going to be much use to his gods if he’s locked in a padded cell. 

He waits until he’s calm, until the feeling of loss from having to send them running is manageable. Some part of him wanted to call them back, even as Sophie looked at him from the doorway and turned away, but he didn’t. He still doesn’t, even when they fail to turn back up that whole day.

He doesn’t call them all that night or the next morning or after the psychiatrist has been to grill him. That’s a fun time. It’s clear the guy’s not buying Eliot’s attempt to go back on what he said to his team, and with the nightmares and what he knows has to be coming across as depression and PTSD, there’s got to be some treatment coming. 

If he’s honest with himself, which he nearly always is, because he has a rule, the depression and the PTSD are real. It’s been harder to fight them than it was when he was alive. He doesn’t know why. 

The second morning, he distracts himself by going over the files Hardison left for him. At the very least, he can do what they asked of him and see if he spots anything they missed. It’ll be the last thing he does for them, but he’s made that as clear as he can do. He just has to accept, now, that they won’t understand. 

He’s as alone as he always is.

It’s on the third page of the fourth file he finds it. An image of clay tablets, inscribed with wedge shaped marks. Cuneiform. He doesn’t recognize the language, which means it isn’t Ancient Sumerian or Akkadian or any of the other languages scholars know about. Eliot missed the earliest of those, but he was around for some of the later ones in person. 

There’s something about one of the symbols that looks familiar, and he traces a finger over it as he tries to work out where he knows it from. A sense memory of water, cold and rushing, washes over him. He pulls his hand away and doesn’t try to remember the symbol again.

He gives up eventually, switching the tablet off and dropping it onto the bedding. A nurse will put it back in the cabinet, where he’ll have to ask for it again. He needs to save his strength for when the gods call.

The directions arrive a few minutes past midnight on the third night. Eliot knows he has to be across town and ready within a few hours. Ready for what, he still isn’t sure, even after pulling out the tubes and wires and wincing at each one. Pain isn’t gone just because life is. Life might be pain, but death, this far from the river, is pain, too. It’s muted, but it’s still there.

He needs to get the tablets, and he needs the right ones. It won’t be enough for the team to get the antiquities if they miss the tablets the gods want, six that are older and more precious than anything else the mark owns combined. Eliot has to find the guy who curates the collection. He has to find out where the gods’ tablets are kept. And then he needs to retrieve them.

He doesn’t need the team for this. Retrieving things is what he did, for years. He can do this one last mission for them, as well as for the gods, and then he can give in to the rushing water and be swept away.

***

Three days after Eliot chased them out, Hardison receives a call from the hospital. Eliot’s vanished overnight, and no-one has any idea where he is.


	5. An Offer

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Eliot carries out the gods' instructions.

Nate pours another glass of scotch and Sophie says nothing. She’s moved the bottle three times, but now isn’t the time to challenge Nate on his drinking. Eliot might not be Nate’s child, or even young enough, really, to be Nate’s child, but he’s become something like a younger brother over the years.

“He has to be somewhere,” Nate says.

Hardison doesn’t even look up from his screens.

“I’m telling you, I can’t find him anywhere. He’s not got his phone or his earbud. He’s not on any cameras. And I mean none. It’s like he become a gh-”

Almost choking on the word, Hardison glances at Parker, but Parker just sits where she’s been for over an hour, her legs crossed and her chin in her hands on top of the counter. Her right knee is only a few inches from one of Hardison’s devices, but he never knocks into her. It gives Sophie a glimpse of how much closer they are than before, how well they move around each other. They were already amazing, the three of them, before Nate and she left. Now, she aches to see how Eliot fits into this dynamic. If ever three people belonged together, it’s them.

“He has to be somewhere,” Nate says again. He downs the glass and pours another. 

“I told you, he’s dead,” Parker says. “Like he said, the dead can’t stay with the living. He’s got to go back.”

She says it in a voice that’s almost detached. Sophie can’t tell, even after all her years of knowing Parker, if the younger woman’s shut herself down to avoid feeling pain or if she really just…thinks that and accepts it. 

A crash of glass brings Sophie’s attention back to Nate. Shards of crystal lie at his feet and he has his head in one hand. 

“He isn’t dead,” Nate says, his voice tight. “Stop saying he’s dead, Parker. He’s hurt and he needs help, but he isn’t dead. We’re going to find him and we’re going to get him back to that hospital.”

“Park-” Hardison calls out, but by the time Sophie looks rounds, Parker’s gone. 

“I know,” Nate says, before anyone can say anything. “I know. All right? I’ll talk to her.”

“Not until you’re sober,” Sophie tells him. “Hardison, he has to be somewhere.”

“I’m down to searching police reports,” he says. “And-”

Hardison flicks a glance at Nate, not even needing to say what else he’d be searching before Nate squeezes his eyes closed and turns away. 

Crossing to him, Sophie rests a hand on Hardison’s arm. He’s tired, she can see, and hurting. He doesn’t need to take on any responsibility for what Nate’s feeling. After all, everyone on the team loves Eliot, but she’s sure Hardison and Parker feel something different for him. She doesn’t want to admit that Eliot might be in real trouble, missing from the hospital so soon after slipping away and being brought back, but she doesn’t have it in her to pretend she’s confident they’ll get him back. 

“You should get some sleep,” she says. “Come at it with fresh eyes.”

Hardison’s mouth twists into something that couldn’t even be mistaken for a smile in poor lighting. 

“You think I can sleep right now?” he asks. A moment later, his whole face crumples, and Sophie finds herself holding him as he pushes his face into her shoulder, his arms around her back. His next words are muffled, but she can make them out. “What if he’s really gone? Sophie, I didn’t even get to… I didn’t say…”

“Shh,” she says, stroking a hand down his back. Hardison has always been a mix of ancient and so young it almost hurts, and of them all he’s the one who seemed untainted by the lives they all lead before the team. “We’ll get him back. We’ll get him back and you can tell him whatever you need to tell him.”

Perhaps she does have it in her to lie after all.

 

***

 

Parker scales the walls of the office-block, the wind around her almost enough to calm the storm in her head. Eliot’s dead and the others just won’t accept it. She’s heard it’s hard for people to accept the death of someone close to them. She just never expected to have people to be so close to that it would matter. She can’t work out why Nate and Sophie and Hardison are having so much trouble seeing that Eliot’s dead, either. 

She looked at him in that bed and she could see he was gone. Seeing him awake didn’t change that. He was there and not there, and he hesitated when Sophie said to be really clear he wasn’t a zombie. Eliot knows he’s dead. Parker thinks she might be cross with him that he isn’t telling them everything, and cross with the others that they won’t believe him.

Still, dead or not, if he’s walking around without them then Parker wants to find him. She wants to know why he’s not died the way most people die, and why he’s keeping secrets from his team. From his family. She’s certain they’re family, even if Eliot’s never got to the point where he can tell Parker and Hardison he loves them the way they love each other, the way they love him. 

She lets the wind whip her hair away from her face and thinks about how to track the dead.

***

The target stares up at Eliot, the sounds he’s making muffled by a gag. Eliot ignores him. He has what he needs for now and he’s just working on what to do next. He hasn’t had any further instructions yet, but whether it’s torture or death or just keeping the guy tied up for a while, it’s all the same. All that work he put in, becoming someone else, someone new… Well, all that work he put in acting like he was someone new. It isn’t as though a few good deeds can wash away what he did earlier in this life, but he thinks he was at least better at acting being good by the end. And now none of it matters. He doesn’t have to think what Sophie or Parker or any of them will see when they look at him, now. Sin isn’t something that can stick to the dead. 

Except…

Except he still feels like himself. He still feels like Eliot Spencer. He aches with the gaps where he used to fit snugly into this body, and something of that cloying nothingness from the next world dampens his emotions, but he’s Eliot, with Eliot’s morals and tastes and duties. He’s Eliot with his need to see his family safe, and he can’t do that from inside an empty office block with a knife in his hand and some whimpering man tied to a chair nearby. 

A man he’s going to have to kill. 

He thought he was past finding it weird, the way the instructions just appear in his mind, but the past century or so has been filled with people questioning magic and monsters and gods, and Eliot knows he’s one of those things and that he’s tangled up with the other two, but some of that disbelief has rubbed off on him. He shudders and pushes a hand against the side of his head. 

Before he can act on these new instructions, the sound of rushing water rises, crowding out everything else. The tang of the river hits the back of his throat and footsteps ring on the carpet as though it’s stone. He spins, and there she is. The woman from the river. Shadows coat her, trailing around her as though she’s almost made of them. She stands with her hood up, hair coiling out around her face, and watches him as though this is nothing out of the ordinary.

“What are you doing here?” he asks. “I ain’t finished yet.”

He isn’t done here. He should have more time. He doesn’t ask himself why that matters, when he’s already chased his team away. 

“They’ve told you to kill him,” she says. “But he’s still breathing. Why is that?”

“They only just told me,” Eliot says, his grip shifting on the knife. 

“Yes,” she allows. “But there have been times in the past when you’d have killed him in that time. Something’s different.” 

She takes a step closer, shadows twisting behind her, and Eliot forces himself to stand his ground. 

“Yeah,” he says. “You’re here. That’s different. You gonna explain why?”

“Your team,” she says. “The fierce girl with the pale hair and the man who can’t turn away from a mystery. You don’t want to kill, because they wouldn’t want you to kill.”

“I don’t want me to kill,” he says.

She nods.

“No, you don’t. You never did. You killed anyway. It’s your love for them that’s changed you, hasn’t it? You’ve pulled back from being more brutal than I’ve ever seen you and gone further. They’ve had quite an impact on you.”

“Yeah, well. You said it ain’t true love. Can’t have it both ways,” he tells her, smiling in a way that has nothing to do with good humor. 

She nods again and takes another step. She never breaks eye-contact and Eliot thinks Tara would change her mind on Eliot’s eyes being scary if she could see this.

“I said the gods didn’t see it as true love,” she says. “Nevertheless, they recognize that your feelings in this are strong. And they offer you a new deal.”

Being dead makes the hope that flares in his chest less powerful than it would have been, but it still tears through him. 

“What deal?” he asks. 

“You get to stay,” she tells him, and gives him a whole second for that hope to grow before she goes on. “You get to stay with them, if you choose to. But there is a catch. If it really is not true love, then choosing to stay with them now will mean you never break your service to the gods. You can have the rest of their lives, but you will be as you are now, a foot on the path in my lands, and you will never get to be fully alive again. I suggest you choose carefully, warrior. Believe it or not, I’ve come to care for you myself, and I would not have you live an eternal half-life for the sake of people who do not truly love you back.”

Eliot’s mouth is dry. He swallows, but he can’t seem to get himself steady.

“I already told them to stay away,” he says, in lieu of an answer.

“And I called one of them to you,” she tells him. “The girl who loves flying, she is partway to being a goddess herself, is she not? I’ve guided her here, so you can choose. The next time I see you, I’ll expect your answer. Do you understand the deal that’s being offered?”

Eliot nods, and a flash of something pale at the window brings his head around. He sees Parker, hanging in the air like she really isn’t entirely mortal, staring in at him. When he looks back, the woman from the river is gone, taking the sound of rushing water with her.


	6. Belief

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The team try to understand.

Hardison scrambles when he gets the call, arranging bedding and medical supplies and rerouting any surveillance on the route Parker’s taking. By the time the door opens to their loft, no footprint of what Eliot’s done still exists.

“Where’d you leave the guy?” Hardison asks. 

Parker shrugs. She doesn’t look happy.

“Parker, what-?” Hardison starts, and breaks off as Eliot makes it through the door, hauling his victim with him. 

The man’s eyes are wide with fear and Hardison hears Sophie gasp from behind him. Nate says nothing, but Nate will already be calculating options. Hardison just watches as Eliot drags the man across the room and dumps him on a chair, bending to tie him securely before he finally turns to them and scowls. 

“This ain’t gonna end well,” he snaps. 

He’s got blood seeping through his shirt. It’s all Hardison can look at. 

“Eliot,” he says. “Eliot, man, you’re bleeding out.”

“So?” Eliot asks. “Not like it’ll make any difference. They ain’t gonna let me leave this life until I have what they want, and they ain’t gonna let me stay.” He pauses there, takes a breath that seems to have more emotion behind it than anything else, but he skates over whatever he’s thinking, his gaze skittering away to other points of the room. “There’s no point getting bogged down in the details.”

“Who isn’t, Eliot?” Sophie asks. She’s using one of her grifter tones, but if Eliot notices he doesn’t show it. He just stares at Sophie until she asks again. “Which gods exactly are making you do this? Who’s going to take you away from us?”

Eliot’s face creases. He looks confused. For a few moments, it’s like he’s zoned out on them, then his gaze sharpens and he shakes his head.

“You don’t believe me,” he says. “No point telling you anymore. You’ll just run to the doctors and tell them I’m screwed up in the head.”

“Try us,” Nate tells him and Hardison has never seen Eliot go against Nate when that tone has been used.

This time, it looks like he intends to try, but after a few moments of what looks like internal fighting, Eliot gives in.

“The gods I serve ain’t ones you’ll know,” he says. “And it ain’t like you can bargain with them, anyway, or con them. There’s no point dragging this out.” But there’s that hitch again. “They say I’m done here. Or I will be, soon as I get what they want.”

“Which is?” Nate asks.

Eliot doesn’t react for a second, then his face sets into the expression he gets when he’s working a problem.

“Documents,” he says. “Clay tablets. This guy told me where they’ve put the ones I need.”

“And you have to get these clay tablets for your gods?” Sophie asks. “Is this some sort of sacrifice?”

Eliot’s lips curve into a smile with no warmth in it whatsoever.

“No, Soph,” he says. “Sacrifice was made years ago. This is just what I gotta do.”

There’s a moment where Sophie pauses, where Hardison can almost feel she wants to turn to Nate or gather Parker up or something, but instead she smiles and moves forward, and Hardison almost believes that she’s buying what Eliot’s selling, gods and all.

“Do you have to do it on your own?” she asks.

“What?”

It hurts, the way Eliot struggles to get what she’s asking. Years, it’s been, since he had to work alone. It’s been so long since they were all lone wolves that Hardison thought it was instinct, now, to turn to each other. Looks like, for Eliot, it’s still not ingrained.

“Do you have to do this alone?” Sophie asks, as though what Eliot’s saying he has to do is perfectly reasonable. “Can we help? These tablets, the job we’re working already has some of those, right? Are they the same ones? Maybe we were meant to help you. Will of the gods, right?”

Eliot blinks and looks very much like he wants to take a step back, and then a few more, and then leave.

“You want to help me run an errand for the gods?” he asks. “Sophie, you don’t even believe in them.”

“I don’t know,” says Sophie. “I’ve always been rather partial to one or two.”

“Doubt these are the ones you’re thinking of.” There’s a sense of finality to it, of shutters coming down.

Sophie doesn’t let it stop her. With a note of impatience creeping into her voice, she tries again.

“Eliot, we’re your family. If you’ve got yourself caught up in some mess with these gods, then the least you can do is let us help you. And don’t even think about lying to me. I remember how angry you got when I tried that on my own crew.”

Reminding Eliot of their past, like this really is some con. But Eliot’s one of the smartest people Hardison knows. He’s not like Hardison, no, but it’s hard to say exactly how smart the guy really is, what with how he hides parts of himself. Enough’s slipped through over the years for Hardison to be pretty sure that Eliot’s a lot more intelligent than he’s happy letting on. And he’s seen Sophie work, so-

“I remember,” Eliot says, and something goes out of him, some tension. He closes his eyes and sighs, opens them again and they’re as bad as when he told them about Moreau. “No, Sophie, this ain’t what you’re thinking. You think it’s the result of some head injury, or blood loss, or that they gave me the really good drugs. And I don’t blame you. Hell, I had more reason to believe it the first time than you do, and I still thought the people telling me about it were crazy. Only they weren’t.”

“Eliot,” Sophie says, “whatever you think’s happening, let us help you. Which gods are they? What exactly do they want you to do?”

“They want me to follow the orders they drop in my head and then they want me to die, Soph, or go finish dying, because I already started. And there ain’t no stopping it. I’ve told you. You can’t con the gods. All right? I… I was never supposed to be back here, not once it happened.”

“Where should you be?” Hardison asks, because Sophie is normally the best one of them to get through to someone, but it’s clear it isn’t working. Whatever’s got messed up in Eliot’s head, it’s too tangled for Sophie to be getting anywhere. Hardison’s pretty sure Eliot believes what he’s saying, even though he’s clearly holding something back. “You say you shouldn’t be back here with us? Then where should you be? Hell? You think you oughta be in Hell?”

He knows he sounds angry and he doesn’t even try to soften it. This is all too much. Eliot’s got his own head screwed up and he’s messing with Parker’s, and they thought they’d lost him. Shit, but Hardison thought Eliot had bled out in the parking lot. The hours waiting to be told that for certain had been some of the longest of his life, and he isn’t sure he can cope with much more of this. Not even for Eliot.

“Not Hell,” Eliot says. “You go to Hell, you stay there. Hell didn’t even exist when- No, you know what? It don’t matter. I came back here because Parker asked me to, to tell you all to back off. To leave it alone. I’m dead. All right? I’m walking around and talking, but I’m dead and soon I’ll be gone and there ain’t nothing you can do about it. You want to help? Then help me get this guy to talk so I can get this over with.”

There’s a silence just waiting to be filled, but none of them seem to have the words to fill it. Hardison doesn’t. Finally, Nate drains his drink and nods at Eliot.

“Let’s go steal for the gods,” he says.

Hardison wishes to God that Nate had said they’d go steal back an Eliot from the gods. He hopes that’s what Nate really means.

***

Eliot shrugs his shoulders, working the muscles in his back. It’s the sort of move that resettles the shirt across his back, but he knows this time it’s pointless. It’s not the shirt he has an issue with. It’s the skin and flesh and bone. He hates this phase, when what has been his own body feels like a costume. 

He hates even more than he’s tempted to agree to stay like this forever, just so he can be by Parker’s side, by Hardison’s side. Just so he can make sure they’re safe. 

The team don’t believe him anyway, all except maybe Parker, and he can’t let himself think about staying too much or he’ll take the deal, and be stuck like this. 

“You don’t feel comfortable,” Parker says.

Eliot doesn’t jump, because Eliot knew she was there. He does glare.

“Don’t sneak up on people, Parker,” he says, and isn’t surprised when she ignores that. He supposes that, for her, it’s about the same as telling her not to breathe. “What are you doing here?”

She shrugs, and he supposes that was another stupid question. He’s on the roof. He knew there was a good chance she’d come up here. He hasn’t decided yet if that’s why he came up here himself. 

A cool breeze passes, lifting strands of his hair, and he can almost hear the river, rushing by near his feet. The same breeze ruffles Parker’s hair, ruffles the dark strands draped across the rooftop behind her, but she doesn’t seem to notice.

“You told them you’re dead,” she says. She sounds troubled.

“Yeah. I did.” 

“But they still don’t believe you,” she adds. “I kept telling them, and they didn’t believe me, but I thought they’d believe you. I thought, if you told them again, they’d listen. You should know, right? And they listen to you normally.”

“They listen to you, too,” Eliot says, and is sure he’d have thrown in a ‘darling’ there not so long ago. It doesn’t feel right now, not now that his lack of claim to her has been thrown in his face by the gods themselves. “About all kinds of things, they listen to you.”

“Not about things like this,” she says. “But I thought they’d listen to you.”

“Parker, it ain’t about who’s saying it,” Eliot says. “Hardly anyone’s going to believe a dead man’s walking around running errands for a bunch of gods most people never heard of. Don’t blame them. I don’t.”

He thinks he doesn’t. He can’t help but wonder what it would be like, if they really believed him, if they’d work with him to find a way around this. He knows he blocked them helping, but it was clear that Sophie was just playing along with what she saw as a delusion. They can’t help if they think he’s lost his mind. 

It’s occurring to him, too, that not seeing the people who’ve failed to love him back has maybe been a blessing, all of these times. When he never saw them again, he could tell himself it didn’t matter. He could tell himself it didn’t alter the way he felt about them. 

He won’t have to feel like this for much longer.

“I believe you,” Parker says. 

Which he knew. He knew she did, because she didn’t hide that fact and because she’s Parker, but somehow he didn’t…know. 

“What?”

“I believe you,” she says. “I believe you’re dead. And I believe you’ve got to steal something for your gods.”

He stares at her, stares at her shifting hair and at her determined, wise eyes and at her slender body, and he feels a pulse of love so strong it could be enough to last even in the riverlands. 

“You’re the only person who ever has,” he says.

She nods, as though the other people don’t matter. He supposes they don’t.

“I’m a thief,” she says, as though he might have forgotten. “You need to steal something. And I believe you. Let me help you.”


	7. Night

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The team processes what's happened the night before the con

Parker says nothing as Eliot stands with the guy on the riverbank, the knife ready. Nate told him not to go and Sophie pleaded with him and Hardison shook his head, silent, and wouldn’t meet Eliot’s eyes. Parker insisted on coming with him.

“They want me to do this,” Eliot says, and isn’t sure who he’s trying to convince. 

The prickling pain of not following a command has built up and up over the course of the day, until he can’t think of anything else. So he’s here, on an isolated part of the riverbank in the early evening gloom, with Parker watching him. Shadows crawl at the edges of his vision and he tries not to focus on them. He's sure there are ropes of them attached to him. 

He knows tears are leaking from the man’s eyes. Even before he spent a good chunk of this life killing on command, even before the wetwork, Eliot wouldn’t have let that get to him as much as it is now. It’s not like many of his lives have been free of violence. Now, though, with Parker watching…

“They’re gods,” he says. “They own me. You don’t… I gotta…”

He adjusts his grip, feeling the warmth of the man’s skin beneath his hand under the collar, and finds he can’t do it. He can’t take someone else from life just because he’s been told to, not when he’s spent so much time clawing his way back from being that man.

“We can find another way to stop him talking,” Parker says. 

Eliot feels the judder that runs through the guy. Hope can be a dreadful thing. He knows. He shouldn’t let it torment this man. He’s hardly ever denied the gods what they want, not in the long run. He has trouble thinking of the times he tried it in the short term, and he’s almost certain that’s the way they want it. The gods are fair, in their own way, but no-one could accuse them of being kind. 

Still, Eliot found hope when he joined Nate’s crew. It wasn’t right away. It took him a long while to get used to being part of a team, and even longer to trust it. The hope came later again, when he finally thought he might be able to change what he was, enough to count as someone worthy of caring for them all. Enough to count as someone worthy of Parker and of Hardison. 

He’s never been able to deny the gods what they demand, but he’s never set it against not hurting Parker before.

“What way?” he asks, and pulls the knife away.

The pain is still there, but he thinks he might be able to bear it more easily than he can bear killing when he doesn’t have to, when it isn’t for his team.

***

Eliot still refuses to let them help him. 

“Listen, man,” Hardison says. “We can do this. We were already gonna do this. And you already did the right thing with that guy, so these gods of yours will already be pissed, right? So what if we annoy them some more by helping?”

“I’m the only one who’ll pay for not killing that man,” he says, pacing in front of the windows. Keeping out of any line of fire isn’t something he has to worry about anymore. “You get in on this? They might come after you. They might make you pay. This ain’t on you.”

He catches sight of Hardison opening his mouth to say something else, but Sophie cuts in.

“I already said we’re working this job, Eliot. Come on. The gods would drop this one in our laps and not want us to help you? How do you know this isn’t their plan? Hmm? Be reasonable. I always respected your intelligence, but maybe being dead has knocked a few dozen I.Q. points from you.”

She tosses her head and huffs, and looks for all the world as though she actually believes what she’s saying. 

“Plus, you need that giant bleeding hole in your body stitching up again,” Hardison says, but he sounds uneasy. Maybe he’s thinking about how Eliot’s even still moving with that wound. “You need us to help you on this one, El.”

“I’m going,” Parker says. “You can’t stop me. So you might as well let us all help you properly.”

And that’s just it. They will make the job go smoother, and he’ll be right there with them in case one of them needs saving. It’s just… It’s just, if it comes down to it, and he has to choose between getting those tablets and getting his whole team out alive, he isn’t sure whether he’ll be allowed to choose his team. The pain from ignoring the instruction to kill is still there, sitting in his now-borrowed skin, and he thinks he can withstand it. He just isn’t sure. For them, he needs to be sure.

“I’m not going to pretend I believe you,” Nate says, and shrugs when Sophie makes a displeased noise. “I don’t think you’ve lost any of your brains, Eliot. You know when people believe you. But we are going to go this job together, and you can try and shake us off, but you know us better than that. If you won’t be talked back into your hospital bed until we have these tablets? Then we make getting the tablets our priority. I already said we’d steal for you. I need you to believe that, at least.”

Eliot feels the fight go out of him.

“If you’re coming, we need to get going,” he says. “We need to get this done in the next 48 hours. They’re moving the collection after that.”

“We’ll get it done in time,” Nate says, and he nods as though he’s in control. “Tell us what the mark said and then go see to your injuries. Hardison’s right. You aren’t going to make it to the heist if you bleed out.”

Eliot will make it to those tablets if he has to do so with no blood left in his body, but he concedes. The truth is, his team have him under their power as surely as the gods ever do. It’s a different sort of power, but it’s there, and they have one thing on their side that the gods have never had: Eliot welcomes the influence his team have over him.

***

Nate has the same drink by his elbow that he poured two hours ago. He isn’t sure what it says that he’s not touched it since. Sophie will have some idea, he’s sure. If he were a mark, he’d have some thoughts on it. 

But he isn’t the mark. He’s Nathan Ford, facing the same chaotic, despairing, raging feelings he almost didn’t survive back in that hospital with Sam. He wants to believe it’s just knowing how close Eliot came to dying that’s getting to him, but something about the way his friend is reacting now has him on edge. 

Eliot seems truly convinced of what he’s saying. 

“They said there weren’t any brain injuries,” Sophie says quietly. “They must have missed something.”

“Or he just snapped,” Hardison says. 

There’s an edge to that. Nate glances up to see Hardison staring stony-eyed and hard-jawed at the bedroom door.

Behind it, Eliot’s lying, as patched up as they can get him and still refusing a real medical professional. Parker’s watching him sleep. 

“Snapped?” Nate asks.

“Not like the guy was ever fully balanced,” Hardison says. “Lashing out all the time, getting real intense about shit. You telling me you’re surprised about the PTSD?”

Of course he isn’t. Nate saw it in Eliot back before they even worked together, and it only became clearer the better he knew him. They got close to talking about it, a time or two, but Eliot always diverted the conversation before it got anywhere. Or Nate did. He’d figured as long as they were both functioning, as long as they kept an eye on each other well enough the team didn’t wind up hurt, they both had demons that didn’t need disturbing. He let Eliot keep his secrets. Still, this is different. This is a psychotic break. 

“Whatever the cause, we need to help him,” Sophie says. “Parker’s keeping an eye on him, but Eliot’s dangerous enough as it is, and he’s already vanished on us once. Who knows what else he could decide these gods of his want him to do?”

“You think he’d hurt Parker?” Nate asks. 

In theory, all that’s happening in that room is that Eliot’s sleeping and Parker is sitting staring right at him to make sure, in her own words, that the worms don’t come to eat him early. Doesn’t mean the theory is working out. Perhaps they should check on things.

Hardison snorts.

“Parker? Hells, no. Not on purpose. But get her hurt? When he’s crazier than she is? Yeah, that I’m worried about. He takes it into his head to run off and…and end someone who’s not paid tribute to the god of shiny things and Parker could end up in the cross-hairs.”

No wonder Hardison’s so shaken. Not only did he almost lose Eliot himself, he’s worried the man who’s meant to keep Parker safe might be the thing she needs saving from. And Nate just thought of Eliot as a thing. Maybe some part of him does wonder…

“We need to do this,” Sophie says. “We shouldn’t let Eliot even suspect we aren’t fully on board. I don’t think any of us can cope with losing him again.”

“You think we could stop Eliot from leaving somewhere he wanted to leave?” Nate asks. 

Hardison looks away, a tic jumping in the side of his jaw, and Sophie’s expression grows even more sad. Nate sighs. It’s not the first time Eliot’s insisted on doing something with or without the team’s help. Hoping refusing to help would snap him out of whatever’s going on in his head would be a long-shot at best. It isn’t worth risking. Besides, it’s been hard enough to get Eliot to accept their help. Nate’s just not so sure that helping Eliot, even with openly insisting he doesn’t believe any of this gods talk, has a much better chance of ending in success.

“All right,” he says. “Well, we already said we’d be with him in this. We’d all feel better if he went back in for treatment, but he won’t, so we need this done as quickly as possible.”

He doesn’t add ‘before Eliot collapses’ or worse. He doesn’t have to. From the way Hardison’s become more and more upset and angry, it’s clear such outcomes are running through his mind. Anger is unusual for Hardison, and Nate can see the fear and worry lying under every outburst. The younger man’s worried sick about the two people who mean most to him in the world, and Nate might have told himself he’d handed over responsibility for this team, but even if he didn’t care so much about Eliot himself he’d still have to see things right here. For Hardison.

“Even if we get him back to the hospital,” Hardison says, “that won’t fix this. They can heal his body, but what do we do about his mind?”

Sophie taps her fingers on the table she’s sitting at and looks thoughtful 

“Whatever’s wrong with Eliot, whatever’s made him sink into this particular delusion, we need to bring him back from it. He thinks he’s already dead? Then persuade him we’ve brought him back.”

“Run a con on Eliot?” Hardison asks. “Sophie, you’re practically talking the White Rabbit. On Eliot. The guy’s mind is like a steel trap. If shady governments round the world haven’t been able to brainwash him, how are we meant to manage it? And that’s before we get into if we even should!”

“We know him better than they ever did,” Sophie says. “And it has to be worth a shot. We need to find out what will make Eliot accept he’s alive, and we need to sell it.”

She meets Nate’s gaze, and he nods. Okay, then. They’ll get these tablets and work out how to make a man who’s waling around and breathing, albeit with some difficulty, think he’s been brought back from the next world. It says a lot about his life that it might not even be the strangest con he’s pulled. He just hopes that Eliot will forgive them afterward. He hopes Eliot’s around to do that.

***

Eliot doesn’t know if he’s fooling Parker or not. He lies with his eyes closed and keeps his breathing regular, because he can’t do anything to get the tablets just now, not before Nate and Hardison go in to get the plans, and because he’s tired. He is so tired.

Every time this happens, it’s harder to drag himself through the mission. He won’t stop functioning, not even if the mission takes months. That’s happened more than once, and by the end of it he was almost begging to be allowed to leave his body and pass through death. 

No, he isn’t worried he’ll run out of power before he gets this done. He’s worried the thought of staying with Parker and Hardison is too tempting. He can’t bring himself to tell them what’s been said, not even Parker, who believes him. It wouldn’t be fair. 

They’d want him to take it, he thinks. To stay. Parker might just not get what it’s like, not having his life to sustain him but not being able to lie down and stop. How weary it makes him. And Hardison just won’t understand that it’s real. Hardison will think it’s Eliot’s mind trying to find a way out of the delusion of death. 

So he can’t tell them. Because if he tells them, and they ask him to stay, he’ll stay. And he doesn’t think he can exist like this for longer than he has to.


	8. The Last Con

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The team run the con to get the tablets, but it isn't their main focus.

In the early afternoon light, Parker watches Eliot carefully. He’s always been a dangerous man, even though she got over her wariness around him really early on. Now, though, there’s this creeping sense of otherness that he didn’t used to have. She can’t understand how the rest of the team haven’t sensed it. She can’t understand how the people out here in this park can’t spot it.

Well, maybe that last bit isn’t quite right. A few people keep throwing glances his way, and at least one man moved seats away from him. But that might just be Eliot being, well, Eliot. It might not be the zombie thing. People are really bad at spotting zombies.

“How do you get to Heaven, anyway?” she asks, leaning in so her mouth is close to Eliot. She’s pretty sure this is the kind of question you aren’t meant to let normal people overhear. 

Eliot blinks, turning his head and staring at her with an expression that means he’s been somewhere else in his head. Parker hates it when he does that. Eliot’s so often there, so very present, and when he’s not it’s usually because he’s reliving something awful in his head. She thinks he doesn’t know how often she’s noticed that. She asked Sophie about it, years ago, and Sophie said they should just keep an eye on him when he was like that and that they shouldn’t go to close to him or startle him, in case he dragged the past into the present with him.

Parker’s pretty sure she knows what Sophie meant. There are parts of her past she prefers to keep locked away, and she stamps on those whenever they threaten to come out and grab her. Eliot must have too many of them to keep locked up in a box in his skull.

“What?” he asks at last.

“Heaven,” Parker says. “How do you get to it? I mean, you’ve been already, right, and come back? Or aren’t you allowed in until you die fully?”

Eliot’s eyes shift, changing to the sad look he only lets her see now and again. His voice is that special kind of soft that hurts.

“I ain’t going to Heaven, Parker. I already told you that.”

Oh, yeah. He said something about it to Hardison, back when he first woke up. Parker was too busy trying to get used to this new version of Eliot to pay much attention.

“Then where are you going?” she asks, and regrets it as soon as she sees the way it hits him. “You don’t have to say. Not if you don’t want to. But…is it somewhere I’ll see you? When I die?”

Eliot leans in, suddenly fierce.

“You don’t get to die for a long time,” he says. “You promise me you’ll stay alive.”

“I promise,” she says at once, even though she knows it’s not a promise she can keep. Not for sure. Not without Eliot around to be their shield. Still, Sophie has said they have to keep Eliot feeling as positive as possible, so she has to be a little bit Alice around him, just for now. “But…but is it? Somewhere I’ll see you?”

His lips part and close again without any reply. He does this sometimes. Parker thinks it’s when he has too many replies to choose one, or when he doesn’t want to say what he has got. Finally, he closes his eyes and drops his head into his hands. He never does that when it’s an answer she’ll like.

“Oh,” Parker says. “Okay, then.”

She sits back in her seat and watches the people around her, because right now it seems Eliot can’t. And she tries very hard not to think about him going somewhere she and Hardison can’t follow. 

***

Hardison locates Parker’s phone as they reach the park. The earbuds keep dropping the signal and the phones have been fading in and out, and he doesn’t have the mental energy to cope with how worried that makes him. His tech should not be glitching, and he’s the kind of guy who considers all the options: if nothing he knows of should be leading to this effect, then something he doesn’t know of must be. 

It’s kinda hard not to at least think ‘undead’.

“She’s over there,” he says, and sets off without waiting to see if Nate and Sophie will follow.

It’s been a while since they worked together full time, but rejoining Parker and Eliot after completing a step of the con is something he’s used to. Having Sophie and Nate there too isn’t so hard to get used to again.

This whole thing is weird, but he knows his family have his back. This isn’t like that time he was in the pool,freaking out over Eliot keeping secrets and desperately trying to stay alive long enough to be scared and angry the way he should be. No. This is more like when he was in…when there was that incident in the graveyard, and they all came tearing to find him. The past several days have been like one extended nightmare of being trapped under the earth, and he really needs to dig his way out, thank-you.

The thought of putting Eliot in a coffin is all too close to the surface. He pushes past it. 

“I see them,” he hears Sophie say, and there they are. Parker sits with her back almost ramrod straight, keeping a guard on the area, but Eliot’s folded over, his head in his hands. He looks close to defeated. It’s not a look Hardison’s used to seeing on the guy. Even when he’s surrounded by armed men and covered in his own blood, Eliot Spencer refuses to believe he’s at the end of his fight. 

“What are we gonna do, Nate?” he asks, because old habits die hard and right now he can’t fall back on asking his girlfriend and his…whatever Eliot is. “I mean, we can get these tablets, but I got nothing on the rest of it.”

“I’m working on it,” Nate says, and heads toward Eliot.

Sophie follows, doing an excellent impression of someone whose world hasn’t started to unravel, and Hardison trails behind the both of them. 

Parker spots them before they get much closer and the look on her face is relief. She isn’t dealing with this much better than he is, if at all.

“Parker,” Nate says.

“You have the plans?” she asks. Her hand goes out to Eliot, hovering over his back, but she doesn’t touch. “All ready to go tonight?”

Nate nods and they take seats across from her. Or rather, Hardison and Nate do. Sophie sits next to Eliot, on his other side from Parker, her body language controlled and her face nothing but calm. Hardison isn’t sure even Sophie’s tricks can work on Eliot now, and he refuses to look too closely at why he thinks that is. 

“We want to help,” Nate says. His gaze flicks to Eliot, who hasn’t moved, even though he must know they’re there. “More than just stealing something, we want to help.”

“You’re already doing what you can,” Eliot says, into his hands.

Hardison feels pressure in his throat, behind his eyes. Parker’s upset. Parker’s upset and hurt and Eliot’s suffering from some kind of psychotic break. His family’s falling apart in front of him and he has no idea how to help. No. Okay, no. He knows he could help in the short term by saying he believes Eliot. It’ll make Parker feel better for now. But what if it just makes it worse for Eliot?

Eliot’s always been so strong, so controlled, and Hardison’s known the guy has issues. Hard not to, after spending as much time around each other as they have. It’s just that Eliot always gave the impression of knowing his own demons and having them leashed, and Hardison never really thought, no matter what he said to Nate earlier, that Eliot would be the one who’d shatter.

Deep inside, he finds he still can’t believe it. And that’s just it, isn’t it? Sitting here under the bright sun, Alec Hardison sets Eliot being dead against Eliot losing his control and finds one option is less thinkable than the other.

No matter what spins out of control in the wider world, no matter what shocks and traps are set against him, Eliot Spencer doesn’t lose control of himself. 

“I don’t think you’re crazy,” Hardison says. He makes sure he’s speaking very clearly. “I don’t get it. I don’t want it to be true. But I’d not be alive right now if I doubted you, Eliot. It’s…it’s madness, what you’re saying, but if you’re the one saying it, then…” He stops and takes a breath, keeping his gaze on Eliot, even though Eliot still has his head lowered, hair falling over his face. “You say you’re dead? That the…the gods, what, own you? Then I believe you.”

He sees Nate shift, and even Sophie blinks. He rushes on before anyone else can speak.

“But I don’t get you going along with it, man. When we went after Moreau, you were all in. You took him down right alongside us. Why ain’t you fighting this? Do you wanna leave us?”

Eliot moves, lifting his head until he’s staring right at Hardison. His eyes are haunted, but the scowl is more the expression Hardison is used to seeing on his Eliot’s face. 

“You think I want to leave you?” he asks, and it says something, that this is the detail Eliot’s picked up on to reply to first. “These are gods, Hardison. You might not get what that means. You ain’t ever met them. But I have, and it’s…they’re… They’re fucking gods. All right? They ain’t Moreau. Moreau was part demon, I’m sure, but these are so far above anything you’ve ever come across even you wouldn’t be able to fit your mind around it. You think you can con a god?” At this point, Eliot’s almost hissing, his voice low and angry and wounded. “You can’t con a god.”

“But you don’t want to leave us,” Hardison says, because he finds he needs to be real clear on that point. If Eliot owes some allegiance to these gods of his, if he wants to go, then Hardison can’t keep him. He’s been all too aware that Parker and he might not get to keep Eliot, all these years, because he said until his dying day and Eliot’s no liar, but anyone can fall in love. Anyone can need to follow their heart. And a man like Eliot has split his loyalty before, and chosen the higher power. Then again, he’s told Hardison he made a promise to the army he had to keep over Aimee. A promise to the gods must count as important, but it doesn’t mean it’s something Eliot wants. “You want to stay. With us. With Parker and me.”

Pain washes across Eliot’s face, but he nods. 

“Yeah,” he says. He glances at Nate, at Sophie, and Hardison can’t quite read what’s there. “Don’t mean I get to.”

“Oh, Eliot,” Sophie says and reaches for him. She pulls him into a hug, tipping him sideways until he’s leaning against her, and Eliot lets himself be moved. Sophie tucks her cheek down onto his head, her hair falling onto his. “We don’t want to lose you. None of us do.”

“No, man,” Hardison says. “We really don’t. But if we’re gonna help you find a way to do the impossible, we need to know more about it.”

“I have to get the tablets,” Eliot says. He looks like he’s working to hold himself together. “I ain’t got a choice in that.”

“And once you have them, you’ll die. Right?” Hardison asks. 

Eliot nods.

“It doesn’t sound like we should be rushing to get them, then,” Nate says, calmly. “But, fine, we’re a go for tonight. After that? We can talk about whether or not you get to die.”

Hardison is almost sure Nate and Sophie both still think Eliot’s mentally ill. They probably think Hardison’s just playing along, that he’s hit on a way to get Eliot to open up. He doesn’t care. If it means Eliot having his whole family around him through this, then Nate and Sophie can think whatever they want to think.

Eliot closes his eyes against Sophie’s shoulder, and Hardison sees Parker relax. Just a bit. He hopes to any gods that might be on their side that they can find a way to do the impossible, because it’s time he admitted, if only to himself, that Eliot Spencer is one of the loves of his life. Hardison can never tell him, because he’s sure the guy would go running if he thought anything would damage what Hardison and Parker have, but that isn’t the same as being okay with giving up. 

He loves Eliot and he’s going to at least try to save him.

***

Back at the loft as they wait for the right time time to run the heist, Hardison finds himself mulling over what Eliot has told them. He finds himself wondering when exactly Eliot made his deal and what goaded him into making it. There’s a lot more they need to know about this, if they’re going to get Eliot out of it.

He might have come round to believing this thing, but that doesn’t mean he had it all straight in his head yet. 

Sophie drinks tea and insists the others do, too, and they all end up sitting round in the living area acting like it’s just a normal afternoon. A normal afternoon where Eliot has blood seeping through his top that no-one’s mentioning.

Once Sophie has a cup of tea in hand, and Nate’s acquired a glass of something stronger, they both turn to Eliot. Eliot doesn’t look at them, but Hardison knows him well enough to see the set of his shoulders. He knows they’re waiting. Eventually, he turns from staring out of the darkening windows and sits, elbows on knees, not quite looking at them.

“What do you want to know?” he asks.

“Everything,” Nate tells him. “Tell us everything.”

***

Everything? There likely isn’t enough time left to tell them everything. Even with so much of his lives becoming fog, Eliot has more memories in his head than most humans could muster in a lifetime. He knows Nate doesn’t mean that, anyway. Nate doesn’t want to know what it was like to live in what’s now Texas before the Europeans arrived. He doesn’t want to know what it was like to die in Verona in the fourteen-hundreds. He doesn’t want to know what it was like to be on the edges of the court in Elizabethan England. There are a lot of things Nate doesn’t want to know. 

“You want to know how this started,” he says. “You want to know the rules.”

“I want to know how we get you out of this,” Nate says.

Eliot isn’t stupid. He’s never been stupid, not in any of his lives, even in the one where he ended up trapped like this. He knows Nate still doesn’t believe him. For a man who was training to be a Priest, Nate’s taking a lot of convincing. Eliot doesn’t suppose it matters. It’s…gratifying that Parker and Hardison both believe him now, at least to an extent, but it won’t change anything. 

The only thing that could have changed any of this would have been one or both of them loving him back, and he thinks it might be too late for that, now, too. He lets himself have one moment of imagining them saying it, of imagining that they suddenly realize they love him. He lets himself picture taking the new deal and doing his best to pretend he was fully alive. He thinks it would hurt them more, in the long run, than if he dies now. And he’d still have to go on without them, come the end.

“It’s not that I don’t appreciate you trying,” he says, “and it makes a difference, not running this mission alone. But I don’t think you can get me out of this.”

“We’re not here on a weird-ass funeral march,” Hardison says. “You think we’re going along with this to read you a eulogy while you’re still around to hear it? Just tell the man what you know. There has to be something.”

And that’s just one of the many things Eliot loves about Hardison. His passion. The man is so full of emotion, of love, and Eliot knows he’s selfish for wanting more of that, a different kind of that, directed at him. He pushes that thought back.

“Fine. Just don’t go beating yourselves up over it. I don’t…I don’t want that.”

They don’t say anything as he takes a breath and tries to center himself, techniques that barely do anything now. It might make him look more in control, though. If he can’t stay with them, maybe something of his image can.

“I didn’t exactly make the deal,” he says. “I wasn’t there.” A sense-memory of summer heat and screaming hit him and he has to take another breath. That’s gone. It’s gone and so far in the past that barely any record of the people he belonged to remains. It shouldn’t still hurt the way it does. “There was an attack. A…a child was taken.” They don’t need to know her name, or who she was to him. The gods cut those ties anyway. “Her mother made the deal. Offered to pay anything to get her daughter back.”

“And the gods wanted you?” Nate asks, still with no sign he really believes this. 

Eliot wishes he could avoid all of this, but smudging over a few of the details to spare himself, and Nate, even more hurt isn’t the same as lying. And maybe some tiny part of him does believe they have some chance, because he gives them the most important points. 

“They said she could only keep one of us. Her girl or me.”

Another memory, this time of the look on her face when she was told by the gods’ emissary that she had to give up Eliot. It wasn’t his name then, but the gods took that, too, taking away his claim to it. The moment his lover chose, he wasn’t who he used to be. He remembers the wrenching pain in his chest at his first death, the only one to have no physical cause. He remembers the edges of all things going dark as she watched, her expression tight and shut down.

Thing is, even now, even after this has gone on for over three thousand years, he doesn’t blame her. He’d have made the same choice himself, if she’d asked him. He has no intention of telling Nate that the last thing he looked at was his daughter’s face. 

“Someone else chose this for you?” Sophie asks, clearly appalled. “You…you had this forced on you? Oh, Eliot.”

“How can that be right?” Hardison asks. “I thought deals with gods had to be made by the person asking.”

And only Hardison could sound so certain of something he didn’t even believe in a day before.

“It doesn’t make sense for a contract to be binding when you didn’t agree yourself,” Nate agrees. “And it doesn’t sound as though you deserved any of this.”

Okay. Not only Hardison.

“What gods are you thinking of?” Eliot asks. “Because I’ve lived through hundreds of lives, and in a whole bunch of them I’ve had to deal with the kinds of gods who don’t much care if humanity has any morals. That whole avoiding sin thing isn’t the way most of them are. They don’t care if the person they bind deserves it or if they’ve chosen it, as long as the bargain’s done. You ain’t gonna get me out on some technicality they don’t even care about.”

“And what is the bargain, exactly?” Nate asks.

And Eliot turns cold.

“What?” he asks. 

But of course he has to tell them. If he wants them to even think they can help him, he has to tell them. Only…only they can’t find a way to get him out of this, so he could tell them something else. Hell, he could tell them he has to steal fire from some other gods and Parker will try to find a way to break into Olympus for him, and by the time they all get back from that he’ll be done here and gone. And he won’t have to say the words that make it true. Until he says it, he can pretend. 

He has a lie ready on his tongue, silver and strong, when Parker leans forward from her perch on the back of the armchair nearby. Her eyes are serious.

“Eliot?” she asks. 

That’s really all she has to say. Eliot will always find it hard to turn down the people that he loves. He gave his life and soul for his first love. He’ll give up his secrets for Parker.

“They have a sense of humor,” he says. “Of a sort.”

“They saved a child,” Nate says, and the undercurrent of horror in his voice is clear, however much he tries to hide it. Sophie’s the only one of them who’s ever been able to hide anything from Eliot. “They want you to-?”

“No,” Eliot says, before Nate can get the words out. “No, I don’t gotta hurt any kids. They’ve had me save kids, a time or two.” That one in Rome, the other one in what’s now Peru. He thinks a girl up in Alaska, about five hundred years ago. “They ain’t gonna make me hurt any kids.” 

It seems important to say it again.

“Then what?” Hardison asks. “What do they want you to do? What ends this?”

Eliot finds the words stick. He twists his mouth, knowing it must look like he’s disgusted or disbelieving or anything other than desperate not to have to tell them, and spits the truth out.

“True love,” he says, and sees that hit each one of them. “The gods that took the deal? They said she mustn’t really love me if she was willing to give me up. So. True love. I find that, I get out.” He shrugs, smiling. He doesn’t need the way Sophie looks at him to know it’s not a happy smile. “Haven’t found it yet.”

“What about Aimee?” Parker asks. 

Eliot shakes his head.

“I loved Aimee,” he says. “Pretty sure she loved me, too. But something about it didn’t count, or I wouldn’t be in this mess now.”

He thinks, perhaps, it’s that he didn’t stay. True love must mean staying, he thinks, at least as far as the gods are counting it. 

“So, we have to find Eliot a girlfriend?” Parker asks, looking round at the others. She says it like they can just…rustle up someone he’ll love, who’ll love him back, just like that. “You like redheads, right?”

“Parker, we can’t just pluck some poor woman off the streets,” Sophie says. “The chances of finding the one woman Eliot can love in the middle of Portland are almost zero.”

“We can try,” Parker says.

Her resolve weakens something in him, and he finds himself speaking up as though this plan has any chance of working. He’s been left unbalanced by being thrown back into his body right where he left it, instead of a clean sweep to some other part of the world, surrounded by strangers. It must be that. He wouldn’t have said it otherwise, not after years of keeping quiet.

“Or man,” he says.

The look on Hardison’s face is one of shock. Eliot wishes he could have the words back. He never thought Hardison would have a problem with it. He isn’t even sure why he never told them, except in the circles this life put him into for the first twenty years, it was better to keep a low profile about it. By the time he met the team, it was just habit. All part of the legend of Eliot Spencer. 

“Right,” Hardison says, visibly shaking himself. “Then we find you someone. I can…I can write something. Um. Just give me a minute.”

Eliot might be the least technologically minded person on the team, either version of it, but he knows Hardison needs more than a minute to write the kind of thing that’ll track down a suitable date let alone true love. Hardison’s panicking. 

“You don’t gotta do that,” Eliot says. “I told you. I ain’t getting out of this. Just…” He pauses. Sighs. “Just help me get what I need. No way we can stop this now, but you can help it go easier.”

“You really believe this, don’t you?” Sophie asks, quietly. 

“Yeah, Soph,” he says. “Be kinda hard for you to ignore soon, too. And I’m sorry about that. They don’t normally send me back to the same place. They’ve never sent me back to the same place.”

“You’ve never been back with your family after you’ve died,” she says, frowning. Trust Sophie to work it out. Probably reading clues in his body language or the way his hair’s falling or something. “This is the first time they’ve put you back in your body near people who care about you?”

He shrugs.

“Guess they figured you guys have skills the mission can use.”

“Seems cold,” Nate says. 

Eliot smiles. Now it’s out there, now they know, he sees it all for what it is: a chance to leave them properly. He can make this family understand, so they know not to blame themselves, or mourn him too much. He won’t tell them not to mourn him at all. They’re family. It’s not the kind of love he needs for this, but it’s love, all the same. 

“They’re gods,” he says. “They don’t exactly operate on our wavelength.”

“No,” Sophie says, but she sounds thoughtful. “No, I suppose they don’t.”

And Eliot knows she believes him. That makes three of them. Only Nate to go, and he can have their help on this one last thing before this life, too, disappears into the fog.

***

Sophie excuses herself as the talk turns to lifting the tablets. With the exception of the client, the con is nothing special. Not with Parker on board. Eliot might have had some trouble on his own, but with Parker and Nate both there to plan, and with Hardison’s skill-set, it won’t even need Sophie for the last bit. 

Which is good, because she has thinking of her own to do.

Eliot must think she’s stupid, telling her he hasn’t found true love. She saw it years ago, back before Nate pulled out a ring and made a decent guess at her real name. Not that she thinks of any name but Sophie as hers now, of course. 

And that’s just it. True love, like a real name, is what you make of it. Eliot found his, but he hasn’t realized it. That has to be why he’s still trapped. Has to be why the gods have sent him back to them, as well, because gods might be cold and they might be demanding but she refuses to believe they are unfair. It’s a chilly, cruel sort of fairness, but Sophie always leaned more towards the old ways than the new, and she’s almost certain she’s right.

She just has no idea how to prove it. Because she’s as close to definite as she can be that it’s not the gods who need to be convinced. 

***

Nate’s watching him. Eliot can feel the man’s eyes on him. Those senses he always had, the ones that made him such a good hunter back in his first life, were heightened by the deal. That, and quicker reflexes and faster healing, have helped him through a lot. Right now, it’s just annoying. 

“Quit staring at me,” he says. Growls. Almost manages to growl. Some of his mannerisms are coming easier now they know. He isn’t sure why. “You know what I look like by now.”

“The others believe you,” Nate says. “They believe you belong to these gods. They believe you’ve died.”

Eliot sighs. He knew this talk would be coming. Parker and Hardison are out getting set up for later, and Sophie’s still off doing whatever it is she’s doing. Nate was bound to try talking to him. Stopping the task he’s at, sorting through yet another set of Parker’s harnesses, he turns and faces the guy who saved him, all those years ago.

“You don’t,” he says, summing up the obvious so Nate doesn’t have to say it.

Nate shrugs.

“Well,” he says, “I’ve thought about it. I’ve gone over your medical records and the police reports of the incident. I’ve looked at Parker and Hardison’s notes. I’ve talked to them about the time since we last saw you.”

“And what conclusions have you reached?” Eliot asks. He folds his arms across his chest, feeling the pull against those stitches that he won’t let anyone redo. He’s taken care of it himself, best he can, and it’ll do for now. For long enough. “You go back on your word? Gonna con me into some ward?”

“No,” Nate says. “No, I think whatever happened, whatever trauma you’ve suffered, you believe what you’re saying. And I don’t see how I can force you into treatment. I couldn’t be kept in that rehab center. But I’m going to be keeping an eye on you, Eliot. They might believe you, and you might believe you’re already dead, but I know you’re not, and I intend to see we all come home from this.”

He says ‘home’ as though it means something, as though it’s a solid place of comfort and solidity and warmth. Eliot wishes he could grab hold of that and keep it.

“I’ll bear that in mind,” he says instead. “And I promise they’ll all make it back. I ain’t taking any of you down with me.”

Nate looks pained, and Eliot knows it’s not the answer Nate wanted, but it’s the best he has in him to give.

They’re a few hours from this thing being done, anyway, and after that it won’t matter. He still hears the water in the distance, and soon he’ll head towards it.

***

Parker watches Eliot as they wait outside the mark’s building. His face is cast in shadow this far from any lights, but she knows his profile better than she knows what she looks like. He’s snapped and scowled at them all a few times today, but it doesn’t feel like he really means it. She’s had to fake emotions enough times on cons that she thinks she recognizes it. Eliot’s acting at being Eliot, and she isn’t sure what that means. 

Leaning over, she pokes him in the shoulder and waits until he turns on her. To her. She misses when he would turn on her and grumble. Eliot being grouchy is part of the background white noise of her life these days, and without it there’s a missing note. He has his eyes narrowed, but it’s just not the same.

“What, Parker?” he asks.

He looks sad. That’s what it is. As well as his anger not being hot enough, there’s that tired sadness under everything. It doesn’t suit him. Parker’s been trying to think how to make it go away, but so far she can’t think of anything. Normally, winding him up to the point of snapping is how to cheer Eliot up. That, or letting him loose on one of his passions. She hasn’t seen him cook since he was shot, either, or even heard him ask about the Brewpub, and he hasn’t touched his swords or checked on his garden.

“I miss you,” she says, because it’s true and because she desperately wants him to come back to her. 

He blinks. Any pretense at anger is gone. 

“Parker…” he says, on a sigh.

“It’s okay,” she tells him, and leans in again. This time, she sets her hand on his forearm and leaves it there. Hardison always seems comforted when she does this. She got it from Sophie. “I just wanted you to know. And, I don’t want you to go away anymore than you already have.”

Eliot’s mouth does that thing where his lip trembles before he speaks. She thinks maybe he doesn’t know he does that.

“I don’t want you to be missing me,” he says.

And it feels like a time when she can be close to people, like a time when she should be as close to Eliot as she can get, so she slides along and wraps her arms around him, and rests her head on his. They stay like that until Nate sends the signal. 

***

“He’s not going to come back to us, is he?” she asks Hardison, when they’re waiting for his techno-babble to break them into the secure rooms in the middle of the building. 

Hardison looks up from his device and doesn’t need to ask what she’s talking about. He looks sad, too. Parker knows it’s not just her boys. When she looked in the mirror earlier, the same expression was lurking about on her face. 

“I don’t know, mama,” Hardison says, but it’s the way he says that when he does know and doesn’t want to say.

“I want him to come back to us,” Parker says. “I want him to stay. How do we make that happen, Alec?”

This time, he looks thoughtful as well as sad. 

“I don’t know,” he says. “I thought…I thought he wanted to stay with us. I thought maybe that was enough. But you heard him - he hasn’t found true love. So…”

“You thought he loved us?” Parker asks. “Yeah, me too. But he mustn’t, right? Or his gods wouldn’t be making him leave.”

“Yeah…” Hardison frowns. “But…he said he loved Aimee. So what was different about that? Do you think it’s that he went off into the army? That he left her?”

Parker shrugs.

“He didn’t leave us.”

“No,” Hardison says. “No, that he did not.”

Before he can say anything else, the lights along the top of the machine turn green, and they’re in. Parker hears footsteps along the corridor and urges Hardison through the door before they can be seen, and they don’t have chance to talk about it anymore until after the job is done.


	9. The Deal

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Eliot's achieved his mission and it's time for him to go.

This is what they want. Eliot stares down at the case, the lid hanging open, and scans over the four tiny clay tablets. He has his hands tucked under his armpits, no doubt looking like he’s annoyed and closed off. 

It isn’t that. It’s more that he wants to reach out and touch, and it’s a pull he’s only felt one other time in his life. The time he met a god. 

These things aren’t just wanted by the gods. Somehow, they’re of the gods. He still isn’t totally sure it was the gods’ original plan to take him, or if giving in to impulse and taking that woman’s hand is what doomed him. He didn’t realize until afterward that she was the god’s emissary. Either way, he doesn’t want to touch these. He doesn’t. 

Except for how he really does.

“So,” Hardison says, his tone almost hitting cheerful and upbeat, “what are they? Some kinda old-timey calling cards?”

“They belong to the gods,” Sophie says. “According to some myths, the laws of the gods, and mankind, were written on clay tablets. The Goddess Inanna talked the tablets out of her father Enki’s possession and she took them back to her city.”

“An early grifter?” Nate asks.

“After a fashion,” Sophie says. “Inanna also broke into the underworld and cheated death. Eliot, these gods of yours…is Innara one of them?”

“Could be,” he says. “If so, didn’t really call her that back then.”

He sees the look that flits across Sophie’s face. When he looks around, there’s an echo of it on Parker and Hardison’s faces, and Nate looks thoughtful. It occurs to him there’s a difference in the texture of belief, when you’re faced with a comment like that. It’s one thing to accept, on some level, that a teammate believes he’s passed beyond this life, and that it isn’t the first time. Hearing him talk so casually about the far distant past will be hitting them differently.

He manages something that might pass as a smile.

“No point going into it, Soph. I’d have trouble getting the words out right in this life. No way could the rest of you say them. But, yeah, I guess I remember something about the Land of the Dead. Might have been in that life.”

It merges. He feels it shouldn’t, but in some ways he can’t quite picture who or what he was in that first life. Even in the sharper memories, he has trouble remembering the clothing, or anything but heat and loss and the looks on their faces…

He shakes his head.

“This is what they want. That’s all that matters.”

He doesn’t look at them as he says that, dropping his gaze back to the tablets. He doesn’t want to see their expressions now.

“And this is it, then?” Hardison asks. “They turn up and…and take the tablets?”

They’ve never asked him to get something so much a part of them before. It must be why he was sent back here, even though it puts him back with his team. Before, he’s delivered items to other servants and he’s taken out or taken messages to people, but he’s never had the feeling he’s in the presence of something they’ll want personally. 

“I got no idea, man,” he says. 

“But you die, now?” Nate asks. “We’re sitting around waiting for you to die for good?”

Eliot saw Nate pour himself a drink, and he doesn’t begrudge the man. If he had to watch any of the team die… Well, he wouldn’t be. He’d find a way to stop it or die trying, but the woman by the river maybe had a point about him. He does need to protect his people, his loved ones. 

“Pretty much,” he says. 

“Nate!” Sophie says. “Eliot! We are not sitting around talking like that. Eliot, you aren’t going anywhere. Do you hear me? If I have to grift a goddess, then that’s what I’ll do. You just stop saying things like that!”

Which is new. He’s died many times, but he’s never been scolded over it before. 

A knocking on the door pulls his attention away. The sound of rushing water rises. He looks around to see everyone staring at the door like it might explode, and after a moment he moves to open it. Parker’s hand catches his arm as he passes her. 

“No,” she says. “You stay behind me.”

There’s no chance she can stop what’s about to happen, if this is a god come calling, but Eliot takes in the set look on her face and gives in. 

“Okay,” he says. “For as long as I can.”

It’s as close as he can get, he thinks, to telling her he loves her, that he’d stay if he could. 

Nate goes to open the door, looking wary but nowhere near as anxious as the rest of the crew. He likely still thinks Eliot’s suffering from brain trauma rather than a chronic case of death. The thought flashes through Eliot’s mind that Nate might have called someone to come and collect Eliot, to take him to the hospital or to somewhere his delusion can be treated. Not to mention so he can have the wound stitched back up. Eliot did a decent job of it, but he knows the blood is leaking out again and Nate is far too observant to be sure he’s been fooled. 

It isn’t anyone from the hospital. It’s the woman. The woman with her thrown back hood and her coils of hair. 

“Warrior,” she says, looking past Nate, and steps into the loft. 

Eliot hears the sound of water sloshing as she walks, just on the edge of hearing. He sees Parker frown as the woman walks up to her, and sees the way Parker shifts her stance to get more fully in between Eliot and her. The woman stops and regards Parker, a soft smile on her lips. Her eyes are clear and gray. 

“Move out of the way, thief,” she says. “I’m here for what is ours. The tablets and our warrior. They are both out of place in this world, now, and will be delivered to the gods.”

“No,” Parker says, voice firm. “He’s ours. You don’t get to take him.”

If Parker’s words anger her, the woman shows no sign of it. She raises an eyebrow, but if anything there’s humor in her words when she speaks again.

“Yours?” she asks. The sound of rushing water grows and she lifts a hand, gesturing in a way that seems almost lazy. Parker moves, sliding sideways with an indrawn breath, something that might have been a curse bitten back on her tongue. Eliot meets those gray eyes and stops breathing. “Theirs? You’ve had many names, warrior, and served many people. Protected many people. But your allegiance is to the gods who took you as payment for your daughter’s life.”

Eliot sees Nate start, sees the way Sophie’s expression changes. He can’t see Parker’s face, or Hardison’s, but he can imagine them. 

He can’t let himself think about that just now. If this is the last they’ll see of him, and the last he’ll see of them, he needs to go out honest. He has his rule, after all.

Lifting his chin, he fixes her with a look more fierce than any he can manage in the riverlands. 

“Yeah,” he says. “Theirs.”

It might be sympathy that drifts into her eyes. She’s hard to read. Always has been. Eliot’s long suspected that, whatever she is, she’s connected to that river in more ways than just always being near it. She’s part of the gods, but she isn’t one. Not as far as he can make out. He’s wondered before if she’s as trapped as he is, or if she chose this freely. If she wanted it, or was made for it. 

He supposes, sometimes, it doesn’t much matter how you end up in a place. It’s whether you choose to own it that counts. For thousands of years he’s done the gods’ bidding, but he’s never wanted it. He wants Parker, and he wants Hardison. He wants to be near them, to be with them, in whatever way they’ll have him. She can tell him that isn’t love all she wants, but it’s part of him, and he finds that even if it means he stays in this half-life, that he has to walk the earth forever as Parker’s zombie, he still wouldn’t change it if he could.

“Always theirs,” he adds, to drive the point home. Taking him away won’t change that. Staying as he is now won’t change that. He hasn’t loved them to save himself. That’s never been what he’s done, not in any life he remembers.

He loved his woman in her pearls for herself, and from further away than he’s loved Parker, even if there was something of the same fire in her. He loved his scholar from much closer, close enough they shared some nights together, but he never quite crossed the line of daring to think it was properly returned. The guy had something of Hardison’s mind, always interested in the next thing, always needing to be challenged, and Eliot never thought he on his own would be enough. 

Now, he knows it doesn’t matter. Love might not be meant to be a sacrifice, but he’s more certain than ever it isn’t a bargain. He doesn’t need any more from them than they’ve given him: a purpose and a place, and friendship that knows he’s sullied his hands and doesn’t flinch from it. And it isn’t, has never been, a sacrifice. Keeping them safe has been what he’s wanted. So. Not service and not sacrifice, and not a bargain, either. 

He shifts his gaze enough to see Hardison, eyes wide, standing just behind Parker. They both look like they want to dive in, and he can’t let them do that. This isn’t on them, and he won’t have them hurt by it. Not anymore than they’re hurting already. 

Still, he finds he can be selfish. He can want one more thing. 

“I love them,” he says, because he has to say it at least once. 

Hardison’s lips part and he shakes his head. Parker stares at him like she can’t believe what she’s hearing. But it doesn’t matter. They don’t have to say it back. He wants them to be very clear what he’s saying, though, so they can’t doubt it later.

“I’m in love with them,” he says, and has time to see them take that in before he turns back to the woman. She has her head up and is watching him calmly. “It don’t matter they don’t love me back. You’ve always been wrong about that. Love ain’t a deal. It’s just love.”

“It has to be true love,” she says, tilting her head as though she needs to see him from a different angle. “True love or it doesn’t complete the original deal. Unless you wish to remain a dead man walking. ”

“So what?” he asks, throwing his arms out. He feels the rush of adrenaline he gets before a fight. He doesn’t fool himself into thinking he could take this woman. She’s further from human than he is and she holds herself in a way he just knows means she has no reason to fear him. He thinks he sees some element of respect, there, though. Maybe, even, some approval. “If I never complete their deal, it won’t change anything. I don’t know why it never counts with them, but what I feel is real. I loved every single one of them. Not always the same way, maybe, but you can’t go around comparing love. Judging it and weighing it. And so what if they don’t love me back, or not the same way, at least? Being loved don’t mean you owe someone. Your gods are all about owing and owning. That ain’t how it works.”

She’s silent for a while, the sound of water surrounding her. 

“Still, it does you no good to use yourself up,” she says at last. “To dash yourself against the rocks again and again. Love might be all that you say, but it shouldn’t use you up.”

“You think loving them has used me up?” he asks, crossing his arms over his chest. He can’t bring himself to look again, but he sees Parker move out of the corner of his eye. He thinks he sees Hardison hold her back. “It’s given me more than your gods ever have.”

“Our gods,” she says. “You may not remember the names you called them by, but they have always been your gods.”

“And I’ve done what they wanted,” Eliot says. “I have the tablets. Just…just get this done.”

He’s wavering, wanting to take the new deal, but he won’t put them through that. He won’t put himself through having to exist without them when they’re gone, with no chance of ever following them down the path.

“Oh, for Pete’s sake,” Sophie snaps, and is suddenly next to Eliot, standing practically shoulder to shoulder. “You can’t take him.”

The woman shifts her attention to Sophie and her brow creases.

“There is something of the gods about you,” she says. “In times past, I am sure you would have been called as a Priestess. Yet now you run cons and steal what doesn’t belong to you. Would you steal Eliot from his gods?”

“You’ve just heard him say he doesn’t belong to them anymore,” Sophie says. “I don’t know where you get off saying what Eliot has isn’t true love, but if it’s not being loved back that’s the problem, then we don’t have to worry.”

And before Eliot can react she snaps her fingers, turning to glare at Hardison and Parker.

“Well? What are you waiting for? Oh, come on. Don’t act as though it’s some secret. You think I can’t see you both love him just as much as he loves you? Spit it out. We haven’t got all day.”

Eliot’s breath catches in his throat. Sophie can’t… She must have it wrong. She’s a romantic, when all is said and done. But…Parker’s moving, coming back to him, and Hardison is right there with her, until Eliot is flanked by three of his team. Only Nate still keeps his distance.

“I already said, you can’t have him,” Parker says. “I already said he’s ours. We aren’t stealing him, because we don’t have to. We’re saying you can’t steal him.” 

“You have to say it, Parker,” Sophie says, but her voice is gentler now. Guiding.

Parker takes a deep breath, her shoulders rising and falling, and Eliot wants to tell her she doesn’t have to say anything she isn’t comfortable with saying. He can’t quite summon any words to his tongue, though.

“I love him,” Parker says, clear and defiant. “I love Eliot. I’m in love with Eliot. He’s mine. He’s ours. You need to leave him here.”

“He died,” the woman says, but she sounds thoughtful. “You’re too late.”

“It’s never too late when you love someone,” Parker says. “If you love them, and they love you, they wait for you. And you don’t stop loving them just because they die. If Eliot’s dead, then I love him anyway, and he’s walking around and he’s talking, and your gods never said he had to be alive to be loved. Did they? Well? Did they?”

“No,” the woman says. “No, they did not. And you? Hardison? Do you feel the same way?”

“Yeah,” Hardison says. His voice trembles a little, but Eliot hears the honesty in it. “Yeah, I’m in love with Eliot, too. I love him and Parker’s right. You ain’t taking his dead self away from us. If I have to turn Frankenstein and bring him back to life right here in this loft, that’s what I’ll do.”

Eliot feels blood rushing in his ears and the wound in his side throbs. They love him. They love him back. He…he thought he knew how they felt, thought he could read them, but he’s been wrong. 

“You love him,” the woman says. And smiles. “Well, why didn’t you just say?”

When she moves, the rushing water moves with her, loud and strong and distant. It sounds further away, even as it’s everywhere. Parker and Hardison and Sophie move too, letting her by, and Eliot can’t blame them. They’ve done well to block her as long as they have. She’s death, after all, or a version of it, and you can’t hold back death forever. Even the gods don’t stop him from dying. They just don’t let him stay dead.

She lifts her arms, her hands reaching for his head, and Eliot closes his eyes. She’s going to take him with her, and he’ll go knowing that this time he really was loved, even if it wasn’t soon enough. He isn’t going to take the new deal and trap himself like this, however much he wants to. It’s more than he’s had before. It’s plenty.

“Wait,” Nate says, and Eliot opens his eyes to see his old team-leader standing a couple of feet from the rest of them, an intent look on his face. “You aren’t taking Eliot. They’ve declared they love him. And it’s true. I’ve seen it for years. Sophie’s seen it for years. And…and Sophie and me, we love him too. Not…not the same way, but it’s love. Can your gods really say all of that love is, what, insufficient?”

“Nathan Ford,” the woman says. “You with your tarnished faith and your need to destroy those with power. I should have known you would oppose the gods. That you would steal fire from them. Not because it’s bright and warm, but because you think everyone should have it.”

“They should,” Nate says. “And we should have Eliot. What do your gods say to that?”

Eliot hears the rushing waters build, and he braces himself to be next to them, or drowning in them. Whatever the gods decide. He’s done what he can. Eliot Spencer, who never gives up, finds he has no fight left in him. 

He feels a hand fumble for his, gripping him firmly. Hardison. Parker’s smaller hand insinuates itself on his other side, and he feels their determination, their strength. He might have given himself over, but they haven’t. They want him. They love him. He finds it’s more than enough. 

The woman meets his gaze again, and the waters rise. Her eyes are huge, gray and silver and endless, and he could drown in them, cliche that it is. 

“They say you’re deal is done,” she says.

And Eliot feels the wound in his side rupture, feels pain and shock and fear. Feels nothing.


	10. Home

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The aftermath of Eliot's long deal.

This time, the beeping and the tubes and the pinching is a comfort. He’s back in the hospital, a mask over his face, and they might have some work to do with convincing the doctors he doesn’t need committing, but he doesn’t hear water. He doesn’t hear the river. 

Eliot lies with his eyes shut and lets himself drift closer to the surface. There’s pain, a lot more of it than there was the last time he woke up from this wound. Pain is good, though. Pain means he’s alive. 

A voice washes in as he waits, warm and present and real. 

“You take all the time you need, my man,” Hardison says, and Eliot feels the soft brush of fingers along his hair. “And don’t take my hand off for stroking your hair like this, but I just need to keep checking you’re here, you get me? Never thought I’d see the man I love nearly taken away by a goddess, or whatever in seven hells she was. Some kind of reaper? She a reaper, Eliot? ‘Cos I didn’t see a scythe, but she had the whole hooded cloak thing going on, so who knows?”

“Shut up, Hardison,” he mutters, not sure the words make it out into the world.

Hardison shuts up. His hand freezes on Eliot’s hair and is gone. Moments later, he hears shouting and noise fills the room. Hands touch him, voices murmuring over him, and he blinks his eyes open to find a light shining right into them.

“Look this way,” a voice says, and he does as he’s told. 

Later, when it’s quiet again, when his family are allowed back in to him, he does his best to smile as they file in and take seats. Parker stares at him, hard, and nods.

“Not dead anymore,” she says. “That’s good.”

And she walks right up to the bed and lies down next to him, slinging an arm across him. She misses his wound and nestles her head into his shoulder. Over her back, Eliot sees Hardison smile, soft and warm. 

“You wanna get in here, too?” Eliot asks, and only partly means it as a grumble.

“I’m good, my man,” Hardison says. “I’ll wait my turn.”

Eliot wonders, fleetingly, if it should feel weird to have Parker draped over him while Sophie and Nate are right there, but they’re looking so satisfied, so pleased, that he can’t bring himself to care. 

“Hey,” Sophie says. “How are you feeling?”

“Like I just crawled outta my grave,” he says. “What did the doctors say?”

“That you’re lucky to be alive,” Nate says. “You have to stay here for at least two weeks. And Eliot, I will take steps to see you stay here if you try to leave. We all will.”

“We almost lost you,” Parker says, her head still buried in Eliot’s shoulder and her breath ghosting over his skin. “We’re not risking it again.”

“I, er, did some work on the paperwork,” Hardison says. “They ain’t thinking you’ve had a psychotic break anymore. You…maybe wanna see someone for the PTSD, though?”

“Maybe later,” Eliot says, because he already took control of himself on that one, as far as he can, but he doesn’t quite have it in him to deny Hardison anything right now, either. “Let me get used to not being dead, first.”

“You do understand that the next time you die will be for good?” Nate asks, as though he thinks Eliot might not already know that. As though he thinks Eliot isn’t so relieved he could cry. 

“I know,” he says, and dips his head to rest it against the top of Parker’s. “I know.”

They don’t say anything else about it, and Eliot thinks he’ll keep it to himself, just for now, how grateful he is that the next time he sees that river he’ll be walking past it to the path, and he won’t ever be coming back again.

It’s okay, anyway. He has no intention of walking it anytime soon. He has people here who love him, and he plans on getting in some living before he dies. They’ll all walk the path eventually, but for right now he wants to turn his back on death, and get on with living.

***

“Steady,” Hardison says, insisting on supporting Eliot’s weight as they make it through the Brewpub and to the loft. “Careful there, Eliot.”

“I can do this on my own, Hardison,” Eliot says, but there’s as much love in that as irritation. 

There are hardly any customers here, the afternoon lull making it a good time to come through. Sure, they could have gone in through the back, but Eliot thinks this is Hardison showing Eliot the place is still operating. Amy looks up from behind the bar and breaks into a brilliant smile. She flicks a look up and down him, her smile faltering just slightly, but Eliot knows he looks a lot better than he did before. And he’s healing. It’s taking longer than it would have done when he was still the gods’ servant, but he’s healing.

“Eliot,”, she says, stepping out from behind the bar and reaching them in moments. “Are you… Do you need any help?”

“Got all the help I can cope with, darlin’,” he says, smiling at her.

Hardison huffs a laugh.

“Don’t go flirting with the staff, man,” he says. “That is not cool. You trying to make me jealous? Because I am secure in our love.”

If Eliot expected Amy to look shocked, or at least surprised, he’s got it wrong. Instead, her smile grows.

“Let me get the door for you,” she says. “It’s so good to have you back. I’ve had to talk Hardison out of three changes to the menu.”

“Changes to…? Changes to my menu?” Eliot asks. “I was dead, not… Not gone.”

Amy rolls her eyes. 

“You ever think of taking fewer risks?” she asks. “What if next time they can’t bring you back? What will Parker and Hardison do without you?”

“We ain’t gonna be finding out,” Hardison says, a touch more fiercely than fits the circumstances.

“Yeah,” Eliot says, after a pause as Hardison helps him through the door. It really would have been easier on his own. “Yeah, I guess I could think about playing it safe. Maybe get someone in to help on jobs. I hear Quinn’s been asking around about finding people to work with. Or I have a few other contacts.”

Amy looks pleased and waits around long enough to give him a quick hug and a peck on the cheek. He lets her. He’s seriously lost his reputation for being dangerous around these people, but he lets her do it and watches as she ducks back out into the restaurant. 

“You are loved, Eliot,” Hardison says, as he’s taken to doing at odd moments ever since Eliot’s old life and his current one collided. “By more people than you think.”

Eliot can’t help the flush he feels on his cheeks, but he adds a scowl to keep up appearances.

“Whatever, man. Changing my menu? What’s with that?”

Hardison smiles and pulls up a menu on his tablet, and by the time Parker slips in and wraps her arms around Eliot from behind, resting her chin on his shoulder, and Nate and Sophie come back from whatever errand they’ve been on carrying cheese and wine and bread, Eliot is deep into an argument about edible tableware. 

Sophie hands out food and Eliot lets her, not trying to take over the job. Nate brings glasses and manages to hand Parker one without disentangling her from Eliot’s back, and Hardison smiles at him and takes his hand, briefly, before launching into his next argument.

He doesn’t hear the waters at all. And for the first time in a longer time than most people ever experience, he knows for a fact that he loves, and is loved. And he belongs to no-one except to the people he has chosen.


End file.
